Koala-sniffing dog tracks survivors of deadly Australia fires, San Diego Zoo says
A koala-sniffing dog with a California connection is helping animal rescuers track down wildlife that lived through the deadly wildfires that have ravaged Australia in recent months.
The dog named Smudge has been specifically trained to sniff out koalas, which has been a big help to researchers supported by San Diego Zoo Global. Those researchers are currently hunting Australia’s Blue Mountains region — which was hard hit by mega-fires — on the lookout for animals that survived the blazes, the zoo said in a news release Tuesday.
“We don’t know how much wildlife is left in the wake of these fires,” Kellie Leigh, the executive director of Science for Wildlife who is a researcher supported by San Diego Zoo Global, said in a statement released by the zoo.
That’s where Smudge comes in: The canine, sporting a uniform that reads “KOALA DOG,” can track the scent of koalas that might not be visible to the human eye in the tree canopy, according to the San Diego Zoo.
Some parts of the Blue Mountains are bleak post-fire.
“In many places, the fire burned so hot that it even melted metal road signs,” Leigh said, adding that “we don’t expect to find survivors there. However, we are getting reports of koalas turning up in new locations; they are on the move due to the fires. There are likely to be unburnt patches of native habitat that would provide refuges for koalas and a range of other threatened species.”
Smudge is helping find those spots, according to rescuers.
“We know that wildlife detection dogs outperform humans when it comes to finding wildlife that can be hard to see, like koalas up in the tree canopy,” Leigh said. “Smudge and his handler, Kim, are a critical part of our team.”
How exactly does Smudge pick up the koalas’ scent? It’s not exactly glamorous.
“The dog will help us find the scats,” Leigh said in a video released by the zoo, referring to koala poop. “If we find fresh scat, we can then start focusing on the canopy and doing intense search — and hopefully locate the koala as well.”
Leigh said it would take three people an hour to cover just half the ground a dog could sift through in five minutes — and the dog would find more scats, she said.
Koala populations in the regions where Smudge is working are particularly vital for the iconic Australian species: The Koalas there are the most genetically diverse anywhere, and the mega-fires that tore through 2.5 million acres of their habitat posed a major threat, according to rescuers.
“We need to find out where koalas might have survived, and work out how many we have left — to guide search and rescue efforts, and also to plan for helping koala populations to recover,” Leigh said.
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 2:23 PM with the headline "Koala-sniffing dog tracks survivors of deadly Australia fires, San Diego Zoo says."
