March 18, 2024 • 40 mins
Welcome to an enthralling episode of the Ecology Academy Podcast, where host Richard Dodd is joined by special guest Nikki Glover, a Senior Ecologist at Wessex Water renowned for her innovative newt detection techniques. Our dynamic conversation delves into Nikki's essential contributions to large-scale development infrastructure projects, her diverse career path, and her unique use of detection dogs for ecological conservation.
Nikki gives a detailed account of how her passion for ecology sparked during her Animal Behaviour studies, which led her to a pivotal role in preserving the Great Crested Newt population. With her licensed Springer Spaniel, Freya, Nikki has redefined the detection methods for this amphibian species, paving the way for potential implementation of these techniques across diverse species.
Gain an inside look into the complicated process of gaining a license for newt detection dogs, including the obstacles faced and knowledge gained. Nikki’s commitment and determination in this process are truly inspiring, offering valuable insights to budding ecologists and conservationists in the field.
This episode further analyses detection dogs' importance for ecological conservation, with a focus on their implementation within Wessex Water’s operations. Discover how the licensing process works, the potential for expanded recognition of dog detection in licenses, the challenges of public interest and media attention, hilarious anecdotes, and the critical balance between dog handling and ecological work.
We also explore the intricate aspects of the licensing and registration process for detection dogs used in conservation, factors affecting the application’s success, the benefits of a 'joined-up' approach towards conservation, and the creation of guidelines for Great Crested Newt detection. Learn about the worldwide collaboration in conservation, the potential of detection dog symposiums, and the opportunities for first-hand observations of their work.
Tune in to this must-listen episode of the Ecology Academy Podcast, perfect for anyone interested in ecological conservation, innovative study methodologies, and intriguing career paths in the field!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
I'm Richard Dodd and you're listening to the Ecology Academy podcast.
This is a show where we get to talk and learn about all things ecological,
including interviews with top ecologists, both employers and employees,
those working with ecologists, and also aspiring and inspiring career-seeking
individuals setting out to make a difference.
(00:21):
The show aims to provide you with insights, advice and inspiration to help you
succeed and excel as an effective ecologist and to make a real difference to
our natural environment.
Today on the podcast, I have Nikki Glover. Now, Nikki has 10 years of experience
in assisting and managing large-scale development infrastructure projects for
(00:43):
clients and has experience working with local planning authorities.
For the past seven years, she's provided ecological support for Wessex Water
in relation to large-scale waste and supply expansion schemes,
as well as major pipeline schemes and wetland creation.
And since 2017, she's been trained to handle Great Crested Newt detection dog
Freya, a Springer Spaniel, and is currently accompanying Freya operationally
(01:07):
on translocation schemes in support of major pipeline installation works.
And Nikki also holds Natural England survey licences for Great Crested Newt
and Hazel Dormouse, and also a development licence from Natural England.
So, Nikki, welcome to the Ecology Academy podcast.
Thank you for having me. I'll also mention we've also got two other dogs who
(01:28):
are also helping with the Great Christian Nuke Detection.
So we've got Nuki, he's been operational now for a couple of years,
and we've got Obi, he's the apprentice, as we call him.
He's hopefully going to be operational next year after a whole host of assessments
this year. Oh, fantastic.
Well, welcome to you all. I can't see any of your companions.
(01:51):
So today we're going to be talking about Great Gresham Newton and particularly
about Great Gresham Newton licensing and also look at the surveying but before
we start that let's hear a little bit about yourself so tell me a little bit
about your background and how you got into ecology and you know up to where
you're working with Wessex Waters today please.
(02:12):
Yes, I am currently a senior ecologist at Wessex Water. I was studying, I'm sorry, studying.
It was an animal behaviour diploma at Reaseheath College.
And I think the last module we had was on ecology.
And I absolutely fell in love with it. And I thought, this is amazing.
I really want to get into this. So, yeah, I ended up doing environmental biology
(02:34):
at Plymouth University.
And, yeah, I fell into ecology afterwards. So helping a lot with bat surveys,
trying to get my foot in the door.
And then I got a job within a local planning
authority down in Devon so I helped assess
with the planning application side of things and then
yeah I managed to get a full-time position within an
ecology company AMEC which is now Foster
(02:57):
Wheeler I think it's called I keep changing the names
yeah and then yeah started at
WIG a couple years later and got
seconded out to Wessex Water water yeah and then
wessex water took me on full time yeah and
i think i was on a mitigation scheme and i
was translocating some newts and i thought there's got to
(03:18):
be a better way to obviously find these great crested newts and yes i did some
research i got home there was a cim magazine on the floor and it had my now
trainer louise wilson on the front from conservation canine consultancy and
she was doing back carcass detection with dogs and i thought you know now I've
got to look into this, this looks amazing,
(03:38):
maybe we could use dogs to find Great Crested Newt.
So I did a bit more research and found that, yeah, Louise had actually done
Great Crested Newt detection of David Orchard.
So, yeah, basically I went off and stupidly got a puppy without any prior sort
of training. As you do, yes.
Did everything you shouldn't do. I also imprinted Freya onto curry powder,
so she was the world's first Morrison's Own Medium Strength Curry Powder Detection Dog.
(04:03):
Well, that's a first, there you go, as you say.
So everything you shouldn't do. And then I went to Louise when Freya was about two years old.
Basically have her assessed and obviously me assessed as a handler because that was a big part of it.
And yeah, so Louise was just, why have you got this curry powder today?
Why is the dog on curry powder? You need to have such small scent profiles.
(04:23):
You know, curry powder's not really going to cut it.
So we had to transfer her over to Bedbugs, which had a small odor and kind of went away with that.
And Freya passed with flying colours. those words, I need a lot of training and yeah.
And then yeah, I applied for a license through natural and then 2017 had that
rejected because we went in blind and didn't have a clue what they wanted.
(04:44):
And then yeah, so they came back with a whole host of bullet points of what,
you know, I needed to produce in order to get a great, uh, detection dog license
to keep obviously the newts in captivity to imprint the dog.
And one of it was research.
Yeah, yeah. Basically he said, well, okay, I'll do a load of research,
see how effective the dogs are and kind of got addicted to that research.
(05:07):
I met Robert Yale at a Hurt Workers meeting back in 2019 through David and basically
said what I started to do with the dogs. Yeah.
And what we were finding out in the field with the dogs actually correlated
with his GPS tracking, his radio tracking study. So who's the story?
Dr robert yale so he yeah the
(05:29):
author of the crested newt book and yeah he's
done he basically all his research side of
things has basically implemented kind of like the licensing procedure
because it's given us a lot of information about how great
crested newts use the land terrestrially and their movement from
the ponds out into the terrestrial environment so
you know how we've got our both the zones of 250 meters 500
(05:50):
meters that kind of stemmed from robert's radio tracking in
studies that he's done yeah so yeah so
he uh is now my supervisor so i'm doing
a phd so i got a bit addicted to the research kind
of thing so initially it was a master's by research and loads
of questions were still being opened and yeah so i thought well you know we'll
make it into a phd and do it more long term kind of try and understand all the
(06:15):
environmental influences that affects the odor and how we can kind of adopt
the training procedures to make the dogs perform really well operationally.
So yeah, really tight, intricate searches to make sure that we're covering the
ground appropriately and the newts are picked up by the dogs.
The scent, yeah, we've basically found that they can detect them underground.
(06:35):
Two-meter distance as well, we've found them. Yeah, and the soil type has an
influence as well on the odour movement.
So sandy soil, yeah, is good for dogs to detect as opposed to clay soil,
soil, because we think the clay soil has the moisture content to hold the ogre.
So yeah, and they're aquatic, as we say, they're amphibious species.
(06:57):
So whether their pheromones are kind of, yeah.
Communicate through them the moisture content is uh yes there's
a whole host of reasons it could be but yeah so we've been really interested
in and also vegetation density the dogs have the ability to detect in different
glass lengths and all sorts of things so you've written the paper there so i'll
(07:20):
probably link into the show notes to to the article there but i mean i'm just.
Literally reading part of the abstract here and it mentions about
contrary to existing studies with detection dogs in
in human forensic context detection was
generally oh yeah so what was the difference between human forensic
and maybe you know detection so with cadaver
(07:40):
detection the dogs were better on sandy soil and we
think that's because it's more of a gassy odor whereas great
cresting it's a completely different odor that's why
you really need to understand what the dogs are detecting how
your odor is going to be moving interacting with the
environment because that that'll really influence your search strategy so
if i'm doing a search over spoil you
(08:02):
know spoil mound that's been dug out for pipeline pit
then you know if it's sandy soil i've got
to work a lot more sort of intricately over that
and i'll maybe get them to obviously take away the
sandy soil but you know in sections whereas a
clay soil i've got more confidence that the dogs will be able to detect them at
a suitable you know depth and that and especially
(08:23):
i think if if it's raining as well that'll have
a really big influence on that scent movement that scent capture
so if we went and did a search on sandy soil that was actually
really wet i think that the odor would still be captured
in that a lot better than yeah if it's dry a really dry day and so yeah there's
all these things that we have to think about and not just uh newt sniffing dog
(08:45):
sniffing a newton in a container there's so many elements to it that we've really
got to think about real world yeah different environments.
Yeah, optimise the performance of the dogs and it's harmless as well.
Well, I suppose in terms of, I mean, we're going to be talking also about mitigation
licences and the different types of mitigation licences that detection dogs
(09:06):
have helped, you know, secure or show us in one way.
So let's, obviously to obtain the mitigation licence, any licence at all,
you know, requirements of the the survey element to
it and then the you know analysis so in
terms of you know you mentioned you know part of
that in terms of the survey methodology there so you know and also mentioned
(09:27):
about the struggles to actually get natural england and maybe other licensed
opponents to understand the efficacy of of using detection dogs so just talk
me through how it differs from a i'm I'm going to use the air quotes here,
standard survey techniques for surveying for grey grass and yeats.
(09:48):
So with the dogs, obviously if we're, it depends on the scale of work.
So we use the dogs a lot for precautionary methods, methods of searching.
And we found that the dogs are actually better than hand searchers as well.
I'll be releasing another paper hopefully soon showing the difference between
a hand searcher with over 20 years of experience in comparison to dogs, both Nuki and Freya.
(10:11):
And yeah, they basically cover the ground a lot faster as well.
So, yeah, I think they managed to find all the newts within half the time and
the pan searcher was still there on his hands and he was like half an hour late
and still trying to find those newts.
So, yeah, that's a really interesting study.
Yeah. And we've also, we have someone in the team, our manager,
who's got a low impact class license.
(10:33):
So if we're doing small scale works, for instance, you know,
drill pits aren't very big, but they're within close proximity to your pond.
We'd eDNA obviously the ponds first to see
whether the great crest newts are there they're present we don't
tend to use dogs dogs can obviously prove presence
but as a tool to determine likely
(10:53):
absence it's difficult because obviously when newts
are out terrestrially they could be anywhere within around the pond
to you know up to a kilometer I think they've even radio trapped
newts so if you've got a small population and they
could be literally anywhere within the environments i think it'd be
quite difficult to obviously prove likely absence
but obviously presence you could you could confirm with
(11:15):
the dogs but yeah and basically yeah so
we would do stuff under low class licenses which
work perfectly with the dogs uh so we.
Can put the fence in it we don't have to do any pitfall trapping i
like to keep carpet tiles down just to make sure
we get your around for beans as well because obviously they'll get
trapped within the construction area and the dogs are only locating
(11:37):
great crested newts so we've also done odor
discrimination trials and the dogs were at 98%
effective at discriminating between great crested newts and other
amphibian species because obviously they hold a higher level of protection than
your common toad and your smooth newts and palmate newts so yeah but i'd love
to get a general herp dog so they could obviously locate every single amphibian
(12:00):
and then have my I specific just Great Crested Noodles.
But that's down in the pipeline.
So that would be trained for, you know, not just amphibians in general,
it is specifically for Great Crested Noodles. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, so, and then we've also, you know, if we have larger schemes that we're
(12:22):
within close proximity to.
Ponds with great crescent utes obviously we have to do the
bottle trapping to work out population size and
then we have to go down the european protected species license protocol
and actually and so we had a job last year where we
had a burst main well a main that basically had
root ingress and it was potentially going to cause a
(12:42):
pollution incident if we don't obviously act quickly and
repair that main so we had to unfortunately
that that main was positioned on a receptor site so located
obviously as a result of development and
there was quite a large population of great cressinutes there and
the main sat right next to the pond so in
that instance we did have to go down european protected species license
(13:05):
but we agreed with natural england that we didn't have to do pitfall
trapping and we also were able to clear that area within
third of the time of obviously in comparison to
doing the pitfall trapping and the 30
minimum 30 days that we have to do for that so
yeah it was really effective we found 55 great crystal newts
in under two hours as well so and that
(13:26):
was above and below ground exact precise location from
the dogs i had to get my little trowel out and sensitively dig down and you
know get the newts out and also working out how many new tools about 10 in one
kind of area as well so making sure obviously running the dog back over to see
if they're indicating if i've missed any or yeah so um.
(13:49):
Yeah so we have obviously different depending on the scale of
impacts we usually have a couple of large scale translocation
schemes a year and then loads of precautionary little
searches and then quite a few like
loads of low impact pass license schemes as well there's
a lot of our works are linear so we tend to come into contact close proximity
to ponds quite frequently yeah because you mentioned about uh we start there
(14:15):
in the introduction about you know the development So the majority of your works
with the Wessex Water are under this development licence?
If i'm applying for a european protected species license
and i'm the named ecologist on the
last i have to have be registered as the development
license holder so yeah i asked
(14:36):
for that a few years back and originally
natural england didn't want to give me the the development
license because i've made the i've only
ever really dealt with temporary impacts and i haven't done permanent but
obviously being within a water company 99 of our works
is temporary we would never really impact like permanently impact ponds and
(14:57):
we always try and avoid you know as part of the mitigation hierarchy and yeah
it's more flexible where we can obviously put the pipelines as well but yeah
so i did argue that in order for me to get that development license i would have to.
Basically infill some ponds or they cause
some permanent impacts to an area or basically
leave Wessex join a consultancy work for more housing development
(15:20):
style projects and then come back and apply
for it or we just outsource the work to consultants so luckily
they did yeah they did kind of agree that it was
difficult obviously being a water company and yeah
99% of our works is temporary so yeah they
did grant me that development license which was great but yeah
my manager has a low impact glass license and it yeah
(15:40):
like I say it works so well with detection collection dog work
that's really really nice flexible i think it's a
two-week process license registry registration process
as well to get site registered and yeah
we can kind of be flexible on the approach of how long we think
we need to do obviously the plans location for that will depend on size of the
(16:02):
area the habitat type and things how much refuge is in there as well so see
for working the dogs in the day they're indicating and it's quite a difficult
structure for instance we We had indications on the sides of a manhole, like they basically.
Stony deer around the manhole so i couldn't get any
newts out of that area so i then came back
(16:24):
with the dogs at night and the newts were out they're coming out
of the area so i could then take them
yeah away so obviously it's trying to
yeah kind of decide how to appropriately use
the dogs at different times a day as well well exactly so
in terms of i suppose the differences between between
and i'm saying i'll use that air quote again then you know a
(16:46):
standard standard approach to surveying and
and then also the the translocation exercise extradication
of greatest needs how does it so if
if someone was applying for a mitigation license you know not using dogs at
all what would you what do you do differently other than using dogs in terms
(17:07):
of the maybe the licence application aspect to that and does that have an impact upon,
I suppose, the information required from Natural England to determine the licence application?
Is that if we don't use dogs? Yeah, yeah.
So are there any additional elements you have to provide or fewer in terms of
the licence application?
(17:27):
We have to provide more if we're using the dogs in terms of like a method statement
to show how we'll be using the dogs because the actual application doesn't have
that as a recognized method.
Yeah. So we have to provide a bit more information on that.
Whereas your standard stuff would be a pitfall trapping and obviously that's
(17:49):
recognized in your hand searching and things like that.
So, but yeah, the dogs are becoming more recognized as a method.
So I'm hoping in the future we'll start to see that on the license distance
application forms, which would be, yeah, fantastic.
But yeah, naturally I'm seeing a lot more on board with the whole use of detection drugs.
Now which is which is fantastic and they're the
(18:11):
only like i said the only method that we can use to actually detect
the newts at distance you know at depth
you know there's nothing else out there that we can we can use and fingertip
searching is i don't know about you how much you've done with that it's not
very effective at all especially if newts are subterranean you're not going
to be able to detect them you know with your fingers and visually on the surface so yeah using drugs No,
(18:36):
I haven't acquired the ability to detect newts underground.
It's beyond me that.
So in terms of then, you mentioned about the low impact licensing and the full license there.
(18:57):
Now, I know we briefly touched on at the moment, you're not using it for district licensing.
Is that correct yeah we haven't i guess it's down to us not really knowing much
we haven't done a lot of research on it to be honest within west because i say
a lot of the works are temporary so.
(19:17):
We haven't had to really go down that route we do
have a scheme coming up next year that might
actually be good to use under the district but
i need to obviously do a bit more research on that
and i'm doing a presentation for nature space in a few weeks so
it'd be interesting and to understand their take on how they
think dogs will kind of fit in with the district level licensing scheme
(19:38):
that they're obviously rolling out yeah so it'd
be interesting to see but yeah yeah
i guess watch this case yeah well let's
say because it's i mean obviously using it isn't like i
mean to me it's like a novel technique you know using and
it's been around for longer than we think because uh yeah
so we think it's just a couple of years but as you say you
(20:00):
know you've been since 2017 yeah within
with notes and i'm sure also it's been prior to
that yeah use but yeah i mean it's it certainly attracts a lot of attention
as well doesn't it in terms of you know both positive and i'm sure i don't know
about negative but yeah but um so how how does how do you handle that in terms
of um sort of the attention it gets from maybe you know the mainstream media and elsewhere.
(20:26):
Yeah, it's been brilliant, actually. It's really helped. Obviously,
newts have been persecuted quite a lot within the media for slowing down development.
Ed Sheeran couldn't build his chapel because there was great crested newts on his land.
Boris Johnson, obviously, called them an economic strain or something red-taped.
Yeah, it was nice in that same piece where Boris was basically slamming great crested newts.
(20:51):
They actually focused on Wessex water and how we've actually deployed this novel
technique to use dogs to obviously help with moving the good crystal newts out
of the way i think it's a really nice kind of middle ground.
Technique as well whereas it's really fast and
effective efficient for the developer so we can get
on with it really quickly but it's also really welfare wise it's
great for the newts because we're actually using a method that's really effective
(21:14):
and getting them out of the way and not relying on tools
that are really constrained by season time temperature literature everything
like that it's yeah the technique's really
fantastic but yeah we've had the wall street journal out
with us last year after my paper got released
there was a big boom of the media interest and yeah
the wall street journal contacted me and said oh can we
(21:35):
come out into the field with you and i was like oh this is definitely like you
know is this actually going to happen and i was like yeah sure and they're like
all right we'll be there tomorrow we'll get a train and it was your local train
station and you could pick us up so I was like oh god right so yeah they came
out into the field and on a little job that we had down the road and,
Yeah, we ended up finding a great person doing that. So that was really nice for them to see.
(21:58):
And it was quite funny, just Freya dove into a bush and I had to go in after her.
And this journalist was, I was trying to get him to come in with me to show
him what Freya was indicating on.
And he was trying to climb in his really fancy London attire with his notepad
trying to climb through this dense bush to see what Freya was indicating on. It was hilarious.
(22:21):
Did he get in? Sorry? sorry did he
get into the bush did he was yeah he was yeah yeah reluctantly
he didn't really want to
yeah but it's it's nice to see then
raise the profile and we've had on jobs at wessex
as well engineers going on we do get great
question needs and we can have the the dogs out so a real positive
(22:42):
spin on it all and yeah lots of people wanting
to come out and see and and just explaining a bit
more about you know great question needs and how good they are
for the environment and everything like and people actually seeing
them and caring a bit more about about them and
and knowing that obviously we have methods that we can help them
get onto site a lot faster and stuff so
(23:02):
and everyone loves dogs as well most people love dogs unless you're a cat yeah
so i think it's a win-win it's it's a fantastic yeah yeah no absolutely i mean
i know I'm beginning to see the light, as I say.
But in terms of, I keep mentioning that in terms of, but from the utilisation
(23:28):
of dogs in detection work, you know, I mean, obviously it's not just great because
you can use it to other species and other areas of work as well.
But in terms of, I suppose, expansion of this, can you see that there's going
to be a greater use of maybe using detection dogs in conservation work in general?
Yeah, definitely. My trainer, Louise Wilson, she's doing a whole host of species
(23:52):
detection and she's actually collaborating with the Worldwide Crime Unit as well.
So helping hen harrier poaching, the dogs trying to detect the hen harriers
and yeah, there's a whole host of stuff.
She's at waterfall detection, you know, if you're ever trying to look on the
banks for waterfalls using visual cues, it's really difficult.
Caught whereas the dogs can cover that ground so quickly and a
(24:14):
lot easier and yeah it'd be nice in the
future for me to do something that isn't live animal that's moving and
lives underground because it's such a hard odor to obviously
train the training takes a couple of years to actually
be good at before you know you really get into the
swing of it and you've really got to understand so much about the
dog behavior any slight changes in behavior you really have
(24:35):
to pick up on you kind of push that dog into certain areas
it's not an easy as much as i'm promoting it's not
an easy you have to be a really good you know
handler really dedicated handler and also think about
your dog welfare animal welfare you know wildlife welfare
everything you've got to think about offshore they're doing
it you have to multitask all the time yeah it's a very stressful job i've got
(24:56):
so many gray hairs from doing it the last seven years so it's yeah it's not
not easy but it's definitely worthwhile and yeah learning a lot well that's
it because you mentioned about I mean, we talk about, obviously,
you know, every technique has its advantages and disadvantages.
And, you know, you've broadly touched upon the sort of, I say disadvantages,
(25:19):
but areas to be aware of in terms of using this as a survey technique.
So, obviously, it's not just about that.
The dog, as you mentioned, is also about the handler. So I imagine that,
you know, if I went out and got a puppy, trained it up, maybe not using current powder. Yeah.
(25:40):
You know, I mean, can anyone set themselves up as a detection dog handler?
No. So it's not for the faint-hearted.
It requires a lot of financial commitment, time commitment.
Commitment yeah you've got to be out in the dark
and when it's raining at night you've got
(26:02):
to be out in the day as well and it's just yeah
like I say picking up on very slight changes to the dog
behavior and also switching off your ecology brain which I really struggled
with initially because obviously as ecologists we were looking at everything
really interested in everything going on and and I also love toads and Freya
started to pick up on that fact that I like toads so she she started to linger
(26:23):
a bit more around toads when we've been out doing translocation schemes.
So I've really had to shut off that emotion and yeah, basically take a note
where she's kind of lingered and then get her to carry on the search and then
put her away, go back and then get these, rescue these toads as well.
So it's been really interesting.
You've really got to obviously shut your ecology mind off and become the dog
(26:46):
handler and then trying to balance that as well with also being an ecologist on site, doing e-cow.
So you've got all your construction people watching as well
so the other day i literally turned up to a
site to do some precautionary searches and there
was about 15 site guys watching and then
guys are strippers as well i'll get ready to obviously swim the area down once
(27:07):
we've done the thorough search and it's just making sure that you're not distracted
by any of that you're really focused work focused on the dog make sure the dog's
in a good coverage of that that area and you're confident that,
you know, it's slightly absent,
that there's going to be needs in that area before they come in and.
And impact it yeah so it's a lot of
pressure so much pressure on it so yeah
(27:29):
you just gotta be really resilient and that respects and
that's taking a bit of time just to get used to the
amount of attention that we get with doing this
type of work yeah yeah i
can certainly see that people just get a lot of attention as you
say i mean because you see it's you know if it's one of
those things you know will it work won't it work you
(27:50):
know so i'm from a from a bystander's point
of view you know you just want to see how they you know how how effective a
technique is imagine but um it's i suppose looking at the licensing system sorry
to take it back slightly to the system itself now obviously we are where we
are at the moment in time in terms of the,
(28:13):
requirements what you need to you know the application and demonstrating the
you know know, efficacy of the survey technique itself, and also the length
of period between, I suppose, submission of a license application and then return.
So looking at it from a, I suppose, a client's point of view, what benefits.
(28:34):
Are there and also what improvements maybe could we be looking at,
I mean, obviously not ourselves, but that may be Natural England or the other licensing bodies.
Consider when it's looking at you know improving i suppose some delivery time
really yeah that's what's good really good with the liquor stuff because it's
(28:54):
just a two-week registration process,
and it tends to go through really smoothly some
more sort of liquor would be great to roll out but obviously
i don't think naturally they're looking into that at the
moment whereas your yeah your epsl that
takes it depends really sometimes it's
gone through quite quickly and taking 30 days I
(29:16):
think the one we did last year that that went through and considering we
were obviously using the dogs and we were proposing to
reduce the time I thought it might take a little while to get that application
back but I think because I work really closely with natural England in the past
and they know how much training things like that that I've done so it kind of
it went through relatively smoothly and quickly well I'd say the 30 day period,
(29:39):
yeah but it can sometimes drag
a bit and depending on who's looking at the license application yeah
so i guess a bit more streamlined would
be great and yeah yeah
just trying to reduce delays i guess especially when we're trying to improve
our infrastructure you know like our pipelines that are bursting and things
(30:03):
like that be great to have yeah a bit more quicker could kind of turn around
for urgent work schemes that could potentially have environmental impacts.
So that's interesting then to say that, I mean, I suppose it's one way,
I suppose it can be quite logical in terms of delays and also in terms of obviously knowing the,
(30:25):
the license the applicant should we say that you know the
licensee you know the nominated ecologist named
ecologist there obviously that can help
so so therefore experience and so they've got
an understanding that yet this person is
a competent person and yeah they always getting provide
you know good information so so in one
(30:46):
way it is reliant partially on that
relationship building between maybe you know that
slow i mean whether whether it is a direct or indirect relationship between
natural england or actually the licensing team
an individual within licensing team yeah yeah and then it would be that yeah
depends who picks it up as someone who might not be very experienced and may
(31:11):
not know what i've done previously yeah they might not understand And yeah,
we're kind of, yeah, what I've done.
So they're saying, well, this person's got a dog and they're saying that they
want to do this. And they'll be like, oh, and then kind of delay it,
put it to the back of the pile out of there.
And yeah, but I think it's more joined up than what it used to be.
And yeah, I think it feels like it's more of a joined up approach.
(31:35):
I deal with a lot with Matt Gill from Natural England.
And he's been brilliant with obviously the detection dog side of things.
Things and he primarily deals with that detection dog element now. Yeah.
So I've got other associates in other companies that are doing,
you know, great christening detection and it's actually,
we're, you know, we're asked the same sort of stuff now, whereas I think previously
(31:59):
when I got into it, I dealt with one person from Natchling and she was asked,
they were asking for a lot of stuff originally and this other company wasn't,
so it was not very kind of joined up.
Yeah so it's great that that's it's kind of developed
a more of a yeah standard kind of approach
and obviously with the guidelines that i can't remember
(32:20):
if i've mentioned that we've produced some guidelines as well
for those looking at getting into great question mute detection so
if you're trying to apply for a license i would have killed for this right at
the beginning it basically gives you all the information
that you need in order to yeah apply for that
license keep nudes in captivity to do
great question mute detection so i'm kind of taking you through
(32:40):
that and it's the advisors for the use of detection dogs
for conservation it's on that website and it's
myself and obviously louise um dr robert
yell rachel flavell from ports of
conservation aaron klein as well from ports of conservation luke gorman from
atkins so they've been a big procurer in the use of detection dogs as well they've
(33:01):
been yeah real advocate for the uses and yeah and cat stanhope as well from
atkins so yeah it was a really nice document that we were able to to produce the governing bodies.
We had NatureScot review, but we had Art Trust review, we had Natural Environment
review. Fortunately, we didn't hear back from NRW.
Yeah, which was a shame. Yeah, but we had really fantastic feedback from the other bodies.
(33:24):
So where's that document again? I mean, if you could provide me with the link,
I'll put it into the show notes as well. But what was the website again?
It's Advisors for the Use of Detection Dogs for Conservation. It's ADDC.
ADDC, okay.
I suppose we're coming towards the end of our conversation. You've been very
(33:45):
generous with your time, so thank you.
Early on in the morning as well, first thing.
In terms of, I mean, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn profile here,
and obviously you mentioned here about new detection dog shadowing consultation opportunities.
So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you said it's been your third year running.
(34:07):
So what's what's the aim behind this
then this is just it's an opportunity for people
to actually come out with me in the field and basically see
the dogs work and see the dogs locate great crescent newts
in the wild above ground below ground yeah it's just
i also would have killed for this when i got into
it just to actually see what's required and instead
(34:28):
of you know it's just instead of having that whole investment
into it without actually knowing exactly what what is
required it's a fantastic way to actually see the
dogs work the type of dogs that you need yeah the
type of you know non-invasive indications that they give and
we can be out always we can talk about everything as well during
a biosecurity obviously welfare rotation of the
(34:49):
dogs great crescent new ecology licensing like everything
we cover and i've had people over from austria she
later came over with vivier and the czech republic as well so they were doing
crescent new detection over there so yeah it's been really good i've got a lady
coming over from australia this year in may she come out with shadow me which
is crazy yeah but yeah it's really really fascinating it's a fantastic way to
(35:13):
and it's a one-to-one kind of session as well so yeah.
Yeah and they can have a little go handling and obviously my
supervision can get a feel for for it
see whether it is something that they want to invest in a very
honest person in terms of like time yeah every
aspect of investment that you have to give just see
whether you really want to get into it because it is a lot it's
(35:34):
a big long journey from the start to obviously getting out
there operationally and the learning never ends even
when you're out there operation still still learning now and I
will forever be learning so yeah it's
continued learning isn't it so yeah I mean I mean by the time this podcast goes
out I'm sure you would have filled up all your spaces there but is this something
(35:56):
that you run I mean I said it's a third year running but you know I mean I'm
looking for 2025 I mean is this probably look I mean don't say you know fully.
But imagine it's something you may be looking at repeating again maybe next
year yeah yeah Yeah, definitely.
And usually I'd stop sort of May time, because that's when my trials will commence.
So I get really busy up until sort of September, October, and then it dies off a bit.
(36:20):
So then I offer another kind of autumn session as well before they go into brumation.
So yeah, it's a nice kind of, yeah, either end really.
So if you are interested, I'm the back end of this year as well,
before the winter kind of hits again.
So yeah, and And 2025, I hope they'll be, depending on where I am and what we're
doing at Wessex, because they're looking at expanding the dog facilities at Wessex.
(36:45):
So I might be a bit busy next year. I'm not sure yet.
Well, I can see that. I mean, again, it seems like, I mean, globally,
you've given a lot of presentations, you know, I'm sure, you know,
video conferencing as well, you know, on that aspect.
But also within, you know, obviously within the UK, it's the, is it Reptile?
(37:06):
You know is it the uh reptile amphibian yeah the workers
meeting yeah workers meeting yeah it was it was so it was lovely jim foster
the actress directors he actually invited me to the gibbet which was so lovely
his i just think i think back in 2019 when i went to the one at the workers
meeting that's when i met robert i think the the use of dogs it was still not.
(37:29):
Considered at that point and obviously with all the research that i've done
the paper that produced used last year it's really got the attention of people
and really want to understand it a bit more and so I give a lot of the scientific
results that we've got and also operational findings so it's a really nice kind of,
yeah i can i can give both of those aspects it's not just
(37:51):
a controlled research trials it's also that operational things that
we've had and obviously i work operationally but
also i'm a researcher so it's a nice kind of combined aspect
but i'm also uh we've got a detection dog symposium at the world's herpsological
congress in august that's set up so we've got all detection reptiles to be in
detection the dog handlers come in come across the globe globe to basically
(38:14):
be in the symposium yeah which will be fantastic that's held in Borneo.
Yeah it'll be really really really lovely to
meet everyone and everyone that I admire in the field and
just really kind of talk about what they've learned yeah what
they can recommend and we can learn off each other and kind
of yeah move forward really it's all about sharing knowledge I think
(38:36):
and I think that's how this will grow is by sharing being able
to share knowledge and some people can can be a bit closed off sometimes
and not want to expose what you know
they're doing or how they're doing it i think in order
to we've got to think about obviously it's great question either we're.
Trying to protect here and for being the reptiles though
it's yeah and they're a massive decline so the more
(38:56):
we kind of share the more we understand about how good the dogs can be
the capabilities and the better for them
yeah conservation status and wow i
tell there's a lot going on there's a a lot there's a lot
that you know you you know you get subjected to and
uh you hear about and i think this this work is an amazing you
know it's i say it's something i think we're going to be hearing a lot more about
(39:18):
you know we have in the past few years but uh you know
i think it's going to be you know become more important in
terms of you know conservation work you know as i
say not just roots but um other species and you know
biodiversity restoration i'm sure
too too but um nikki it's been a
pleasure talking to you today i do apologize
(39:38):
we're cutting short in our time but uh it's it's we but i just wish you and
and freya and obi and yuki all the best for this forthcoming season but but
for now thank you for joining me on the ecology academy podcast probably thank
you for having me as well it's been really yeah it's been great talking to you.
If you like our show and want to help, then please click on the subscribe button
(40:02):
and rate us on your favourite podcast player, as that's how you can inspire
ecologists in the making,
help retain great talent and provide insights of our industry to a much wider
audience of why ecology really does matter. Thank you.
And remember, learning is a lifelong endeavour, so stay curious,
(40:23):
be adventurous and build bridges.
Music.
I'm Richard Dodd and you're listening to the Ecology Academy podcast.
This is a show where we get to talk and learn about all things ecological,
including interviews with top ecologists, both employers and employees,
those working with ecologists, and also aspiring and inspiring career-seeking
individuals setting out to make a difference.
(00:21):
The show aims to provide you with insights, advice and inspiration to help you
succeed and excel as an effective ecologist and to make a real difference to
our natural environment.
Today on the podcast, I have Nikki Glover. Now, Nikki has 10 years of experience
in assisting and managing large-scale development infrastructure projects for
(00:43):
clients and has experience working with local planning authorities.
For the past seven years, she's provided ecological support for Wessex Water
in relation to large-scale waste and supply expansion schemes,
as well as major pipeline schemes and wetland creation.
And since 2017, she's been trained to handle Great Crested Newt detection dog
Freya, a Springer Spaniel, and is currently accompanying Freya operationally
(01:07):
on translocation schemes in support of major pipeline installation works.
And Nikki also holds Natural England survey licences for Great Crested Newt
and Hazel Dormouse, and also a development licence from Natural England.
So, Nikki, welcome to the Ecology Academy podcast.
Thank you for having me. I'll also mention we've also got two other dogs who
(01:28):
are also helping with the Great Christian Nuke Detection.
So we've got Nuki, he's been operational now for a couple of years,
and we've got Obi, he's the apprentice, as we call him.
He's hopefully going to be operational next year after a whole host of assessments
this year. Oh, fantastic.
Well, welcome to you all. I can't see any of your companions.
(01:51):
So today we're going to be talking about Great Gresham Newton and particularly
about Great Gresham Newton licensing and also look at the surveying but before
we start that let's hear a little bit about yourself so tell me a little bit
about your background and how you got into ecology and you know up to where
you're working with Wessex Waters today please.
(02:12):
Yes, I am currently a senior ecologist at Wessex Water. I was studying, I'm sorry, studying.
It was an animal behaviour diploma at Reaseheath College.
And I think the last module we had was on ecology.
And I absolutely fell in love with it. And I thought, this is amazing.
I really want to get into this. So, yeah, I ended up doing environmental biology
(02:34):
at Plymouth University.
And, yeah, I fell into ecology afterwards. So helping a lot with bat surveys,
trying to get my foot in the door.
And then I got a job within a local planning
authority down in Devon so I helped assess
with the planning application side of things and then
yeah I managed to get a full-time position within an
ecology company AMEC which is now Foster
(02:57):
Wheeler I think it's called I keep changing the names
yeah and then yeah started at
WIG a couple years later and got
seconded out to Wessex Water water yeah and then
wessex water took me on full time yeah and
i think i was on a mitigation scheme and i
was translocating some newts and i thought there's got to
(03:18):
be a better way to obviously find these great crested newts and yes i did some
research i got home there was a cim magazine on the floor and it had my now
trainer louise wilson on the front from conservation canine consultancy and
she was doing back carcass detection with dogs and i thought you know now I've
got to look into this, this looks amazing,
(03:38):
maybe we could use dogs to find Great Crested Newt.
So I did a bit more research and found that, yeah, Louise had actually done
Great Crested Newt detection of David Orchard.
So, yeah, basically I went off and stupidly got a puppy without any prior sort
of training. As you do, yes.
Did everything you shouldn't do. I also imprinted Freya onto curry powder,
so she was the world's first Morrison's Own Medium Strength Curry Powder Detection Dog.
(04:03):
Well, that's a first, there you go, as you say.
So everything you shouldn't do. And then I went to Louise when Freya was about two years old.
Basically have her assessed and obviously me assessed as a handler because that was a big part of it.
And yeah, so Louise was just, why have you got this curry powder today?
Why is the dog on curry powder? You need to have such small scent profiles.
(04:23):
You know, curry powder's not really going to cut it.
So we had to transfer her over to Bedbugs, which had a small odor and kind of went away with that.
And Freya passed with flying colours. those words, I need a lot of training and yeah.
And then yeah, I applied for a license through natural and then 2017 had that
rejected because we went in blind and didn't have a clue what they wanted.
(04:44):
And then yeah, so they came back with a whole host of bullet points of what,
you know, I needed to produce in order to get a great, uh, detection dog license
to keep obviously the newts in captivity to imprint the dog.
And one of it was research.
Yeah, yeah. Basically he said, well, okay, I'll do a load of research,
see how effective the dogs are and kind of got addicted to that research.
(05:07):
I met Robert Yale at a Hurt Workers meeting back in 2019 through David and basically
said what I started to do with the dogs. Yeah.
And what we were finding out in the field with the dogs actually correlated
with his GPS tracking, his radio tracking study. So who's the story?
Dr robert yale so he yeah the
(05:29):
author of the crested newt book and yeah he's
done he basically all his research side of
things has basically implemented kind of like the licensing procedure
because it's given us a lot of information about how great
crested newts use the land terrestrially and their movement from
the ponds out into the terrestrial environment so
you know how we've got our both the zones of 250 meters 500
(05:50):
meters that kind of stemmed from robert's radio tracking in
studies that he's done yeah so yeah so
he uh is now my supervisor so i'm doing
a phd so i got a bit addicted to the research kind
of thing so initially it was a master's by research and loads
of questions were still being opened and yeah so i thought well you know we'll
make it into a phd and do it more long term kind of try and understand all the
(06:15):
environmental influences that affects the odor and how we can kind of adopt
the training procedures to make the dogs perform really well operationally.
So yeah, really tight, intricate searches to make sure that we're covering the
ground appropriately and the newts are picked up by the dogs.
The scent, yeah, we've basically found that they can detect them underground.
(06:35):
Two-meter distance as well, we've found them. Yeah, and the soil type has an
influence as well on the odour movement.
So sandy soil, yeah, is good for dogs to detect as opposed to clay soil,
soil, because we think the clay soil has the moisture content to hold the ogre.
So yeah, and they're aquatic, as we say, they're amphibious species.
(06:57):
So whether their pheromones are kind of, yeah.
Communicate through them the moisture content is uh yes there's
a whole host of reasons it could be but yeah so we've been really interested
in and also vegetation density the dogs have the ability to detect in different
glass lengths and all sorts of things so you've written the paper there so i'll
(07:20):
probably link into the show notes to to the article there but i mean i'm just.
Literally reading part of the abstract here and it mentions about
contrary to existing studies with detection dogs in
in human forensic context detection was
generally oh yeah so what was the difference between human forensic
and maybe you know detection so with cadaver
(07:40):
detection the dogs were better on sandy soil and we
think that's because it's more of a gassy odor whereas great
cresting it's a completely different odor that's why
you really need to understand what the dogs are detecting how
your odor is going to be moving interacting with the
environment because that that'll really influence your search strategy so
if i'm doing a search over spoil you
(08:02):
know spoil mound that's been dug out for pipeline pit
then you know if it's sandy soil i've got
to work a lot more sort of intricately over that
and i'll maybe get them to obviously take away the
sandy soil but you know in sections whereas a
clay soil i've got more confidence that the dogs will be able to detect them at
a suitable you know depth and that and especially
(08:23):
i think if if it's raining as well that'll have
a really big influence on that scent movement that scent capture
so if we went and did a search on sandy soil that was actually
really wet i think that the odor would still be captured
in that a lot better than yeah if it's dry a really dry day and so yeah there's
all these things that we have to think about and not just uh newt sniffing dog
(08:45):
sniffing a newton in a container there's so many elements to it that we've really
got to think about real world yeah different environments.
Yeah, optimise the performance of the dogs and it's harmless as well.
Well, I suppose in terms of, I mean, we're going to be talking also about mitigation
licences and the different types of mitigation licences that detection dogs
(09:06):
have helped, you know, secure or show us in one way.
So let's, obviously to obtain the mitigation licence, any licence at all,
you know, requirements of the the survey element to
it and then the you know analysis so in
terms of you know you mentioned you know part of
that in terms of the survey methodology there so you know and also mentioned
(09:27):
about the struggles to actually get natural england and maybe other licensed
opponents to understand the efficacy of of using detection dogs so just talk
me through how it differs from a i'm I'm going to use the air quotes here,
standard survey techniques for surveying for grey grass and yeats.
(09:48):
So with the dogs, obviously if we're, it depends on the scale of work.
So we use the dogs a lot for precautionary methods, methods of searching.
And we found that the dogs are actually better than hand searchers as well.
I'll be releasing another paper hopefully soon showing the difference between
a hand searcher with over 20 years of experience in comparison to dogs, both Nuki and Freya.
(10:11):
And yeah, they basically cover the ground a lot faster as well.
So, yeah, I think they managed to find all the newts within half the time and
the pan searcher was still there on his hands and he was like half an hour late
and still trying to find those newts.
So, yeah, that's a really interesting study.
Yeah. And we've also, we have someone in the team, our manager,
who's got a low impact class license.
(10:33):
So if we're doing small scale works, for instance, you know,
drill pits aren't very big, but they're within close proximity to your pond.
We'd eDNA obviously the ponds first to see
whether the great crest newts are there they're present we don't
tend to use dogs dogs can obviously prove presence
but as a tool to determine likely
(10:53):
absence it's difficult because obviously when newts
are out terrestrially they could be anywhere within around the pond
to you know up to a kilometer I think they've even radio trapped
newts so if you've got a small population and they
could be literally anywhere within the environments i think it'd be
quite difficult to obviously prove likely absence
but obviously presence you could you could confirm with
(11:15):
the dogs but yeah and basically yeah so
we would do stuff under low class licenses which
work perfectly with the dogs uh so we.
Can put the fence in it we don't have to do any pitfall trapping i
like to keep carpet tiles down just to make sure
we get your around for beans as well because obviously they'll get
trapped within the construction area and the dogs are only locating
(11:37):
great crested newts so we've also done odor
discrimination trials and the dogs were at 98%
effective at discriminating between great crested newts and other
amphibian species because obviously they hold a higher level of protection than
your common toad and your smooth newts and palmate newts so yeah but i'd love
to get a general herp dog so they could obviously locate every single amphibian
(12:00):
and then have my I specific just Great Crested Noodles.
But that's down in the pipeline.
So that would be trained for, you know, not just amphibians in general,
it is specifically for Great Crested Noodles. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, so, and then we've also, you know, if we have larger schemes that we're
(12:22):
within close proximity to.
Ponds with great crescent utes obviously we have to do the
bottle trapping to work out population size and
then we have to go down the european protected species license protocol
and actually and so we had a job last year where we
had a burst main well a main that basically had
root ingress and it was potentially going to cause a
(12:42):
pollution incident if we don't obviously act quickly and
repair that main so we had to unfortunately
that that main was positioned on a receptor site so located
obviously as a result of development and
there was quite a large population of great cressinutes there and
the main sat right next to the pond so in
that instance we did have to go down european protected species license
(13:05):
but we agreed with natural england that we didn't have to do pitfall
trapping and we also were able to clear that area within
third of the time of obviously in comparison to
doing the pitfall trapping and the 30
minimum 30 days that we have to do for that so
yeah it was really effective we found 55 great crystal newts
in under two hours as well so and that
(13:26):
was above and below ground exact precise location from
the dogs i had to get my little trowel out and sensitively dig down and you
know get the newts out and also working out how many new tools about 10 in one
kind of area as well so making sure obviously running the dog back over to see
if they're indicating if i've missed any or yeah so um.
(13:49):
Yeah so we have obviously different depending on the scale of
impacts we usually have a couple of large scale translocation
schemes a year and then loads of precautionary little
searches and then quite a few like
loads of low impact pass license schemes as well there's
a lot of our works are linear so we tend to come into contact close proximity
to ponds quite frequently yeah because you mentioned about uh we start there
(14:15):
in the introduction about you know the development So the majority of your works
with the Wessex Water are under this development licence?
If i'm applying for a european protected species license
and i'm the named ecologist on the
last i have to have be registered as the development
license holder so yeah i asked
(14:36):
for that a few years back and originally
natural england didn't want to give me the the development
license because i've made the i've only
ever really dealt with temporary impacts and i haven't done permanent but
obviously being within a water company 99 of our works
is temporary we would never really impact like permanently impact ponds and
(14:57):
we always try and avoid you know as part of the mitigation hierarchy and yeah
it's more flexible where we can obviously put the pipelines as well but yeah
so i did argue that in order for me to get that development license i would have to.
Basically infill some ponds or they cause
some permanent impacts to an area or basically
leave Wessex join a consultancy work for more housing development
(15:20):
style projects and then come back and apply
for it or we just outsource the work to consultants so luckily
they did yeah they did kind of agree that it was
difficult obviously being a water company and yeah
99% of our works is temporary so yeah they
did grant me that development license which was great but yeah
my manager has a low impact glass license and it yeah
(15:40):
like I say it works so well with detection collection dog work
that's really really nice flexible i think it's a
two-week process license registry registration process
as well to get site registered and yeah
we can kind of be flexible on the approach of how long we think
we need to do obviously the plans location for that will depend on size of the
(16:02):
area the habitat type and things how much refuge is in there as well so see
for working the dogs in the day they're indicating and it's quite a difficult
structure for instance we We had indications on the sides of a manhole, like they basically.
Stony deer around the manhole so i couldn't get any
newts out of that area so i then came back
(16:24):
with the dogs at night and the newts were out they're coming out
of the area so i could then take them
yeah away so obviously it's trying to
yeah kind of decide how to appropriately use
the dogs at different times a day as well well exactly so
in terms of i suppose the differences between between
and i'm saying i'll use that air quote again then you know a
(16:46):
standard standard approach to surveying and
and then also the the translocation exercise extradication
of greatest needs how does it so if
if someone was applying for a mitigation license you know not using dogs at
all what would you what do you do differently other than using dogs in terms
(17:07):
of the maybe the licence application aspect to that and does that have an impact upon,
I suppose, the information required from Natural England to determine the licence application?
Is that if we don't use dogs? Yeah, yeah.
So are there any additional elements you have to provide or fewer in terms of
the licence application?
(17:27):
We have to provide more if we're using the dogs in terms of like a method statement
to show how we'll be using the dogs because the actual application doesn't have
that as a recognized method.
Yeah. So we have to provide a bit more information on that.
Whereas your standard stuff would be a pitfall trapping and obviously that's
(17:49):
recognized in your hand searching and things like that.
So, but yeah, the dogs are becoming more recognized as a method.
So I'm hoping in the future we'll start to see that on the license distance
application forms, which would be, yeah, fantastic.
But yeah, naturally I'm seeing a lot more on board with the whole use of detection drugs.
Now which is which is fantastic and they're the
(18:11):
only like i said the only method that we can use to actually detect
the newts at distance you know at depth
you know there's nothing else out there that we can we can use and fingertip
searching is i don't know about you how much you've done with that it's not
very effective at all especially if newts are subterranean you're not going
to be able to detect them you know with your fingers and visually on the surface so yeah using drugs No,
(18:36):
I haven't acquired the ability to detect newts underground.
It's beyond me that.
So in terms of then, you mentioned about the low impact licensing and the full license there.
(18:57):
Now, I know we briefly touched on at the moment, you're not using it for district licensing.
Is that correct yeah we haven't i guess it's down to us not really knowing much
we haven't done a lot of research on it to be honest within west because i say
a lot of the works are temporary so.
(19:17):
We haven't had to really go down that route we do
have a scheme coming up next year that might
actually be good to use under the district but
i need to obviously do a bit more research on that
and i'm doing a presentation for nature space in a few weeks so
it'd be interesting and to understand their take on how they
think dogs will kind of fit in with the district level licensing scheme
(19:38):
that they're obviously rolling out yeah so it'd
be interesting to see but yeah yeah
i guess watch this case yeah well let's
say because it's i mean obviously using it isn't like i
mean to me it's like a novel technique you know using and
it's been around for longer than we think because uh yeah
so we think it's just a couple of years but as you say you
(20:00):
know you've been since 2017 yeah within
with notes and i'm sure also it's been prior to
that yeah use but yeah i mean it's it certainly attracts a lot of attention
as well doesn't it in terms of you know both positive and i'm sure i don't know
about negative but yeah but um so how how does how do you handle that in terms
of um sort of the attention it gets from maybe you know the mainstream media and elsewhere.
(20:26):
Yeah, it's been brilliant, actually. It's really helped. Obviously,
newts have been persecuted quite a lot within the media for slowing down development.
Ed Sheeran couldn't build his chapel because there was great crested newts on his land.
Boris Johnson, obviously, called them an economic strain or something red-taped.
Yeah, it was nice in that same piece where Boris was basically slamming great crested newts.
(20:51):
They actually focused on Wessex water and how we've actually deployed this novel
technique to use dogs to obviously help with moving the good crystal newts out
of the way i think it's a really nice kind of middle ground.
Technique as well whereas it's really fast and
effective efficient for the developer so we can get
on with it really quickly but it's also really welfare wise it's
great for the newts because we're actually using a method that's really effective
(21:14):
and getting them out of the way and not relying on tools
that are really constrained by season time temperature literature everything
like that it's yeah the technique's really
fantastic but yeah we've had the wall street journal out
with us last year after my paper got released
there was a big boom of the media interest and yeah
the wall street journal contacted me and said oh can we
(21:35):
come out into the field with you and i was like oh this is definitely like you
know is this actually going to happen and i was like yeah sure and they're like
all right we'll be there tomorrow we'll get a train and it was your local train
station and you could pick us up so I was like oh god right so yeah they came
out into the field and on a little job that we had down the road and,
Yeah, we ended up finding a great person doing that. So that was really nice for them to see.
(21:58):
And it was quite funny, just Freya dove into a bush and I had to go in after her.
And this journalist was, I was trying to get him to come in with me to show
him what Freya was indicating on.
And he was trying to climb in his really fancy London attire with his notepad
trying to climb through this dense bush to see what Freya was indicating on. It was hilarious.
(22:21):
Did he get in? Sorry? sorry did he
get into the bush did he was yeah he was yeah yeah reluctantly
he didn't really want to
yeah but it's it's nice to see then
raise the profile and we've had on jobs at wessex
as well engineers going on we do get great
question needs and we can have the the dogs out so a real positive
(22:42):
spin on it all and yeah lots of people wanting
to come out and see and and just explaining a bit
more about you know great question needs and how good they are
for the environment and everything like and people actually seeing
them and caring a bit more about about them and
and knowing that obviously we have methods that we can help them
get onto site a lot faster and stuff so
(23:02):
and everyone loves dogs as well most people love dogs unless you're a cat yeah
so i think it's a win-win it's it's a fantastic yeah yeah no absolutely i mean
i know I'm beginning to see the light, as I say.
But in terms of, I keep mentioning that in terms of, but from the utilisation
(23:28):
of dogs in detection work, you know, I mean, obviously it's not just great because
you can use it to other species and other areas of work as well.
But in terms of, I suppose, expansion of this, can you see that there's going
to be a greater use of maybe using detection dogs in conservation work in general?
Yeah, definitely. My trainer, Louise Wilson, she's doing a whole host of species
(23:52):
detection and she's actually collaborating with the Worldwide Crime Unit as well.
So helping hen harrier poaching, the dogs trying to detect the hen harriers
and yeah, there's a whole host of stuff.
She's at waterfall detection, you know, if you're ever trying to look on the
banks for waterfalls using visual cues, it's really difficult.
Caught whereas the dogs can cover that ground so quickly and a
(24:14):
lot easier and yeah it'd be nice in the
future for me to do something that isn't live animal that's moving and
lives underground because it's such a hard odor to obviously
train the training takes a couple of years to actually
be good at before you know you really get into the
swing of it and you've really got to understand so much about the
dog behavior any slight changes in behavior you really have
(24:35):
to pick up on you kind of push that dog into certain areas
it's not an easy as much as i'm promoting it's not
an easy you have to be a really good you know
handler really dedicated handler and also think about
your dog welfare animal welfare you know wildlife welfare
everything you've got to think about offshore they're doing
it you have to multitask all the time yeah it's a very stressful job i've got
(24:56):
so many gray hairs from doing it the last seven years so it's yeah it's not
not easy but it's definitely worthwhile and yeah learning a lot well that's
it because you mentioned about I mean, we talk about, obviously,
you know, every technique has its advantages and disadvantages.
And, you know, you've broadly touched upon the sort of, I say disadvantages,
(25:19):
but areas to be aware of in terms of using this as a survey technique.
So, obviously, it's not just about that.
The dog, as you mentioned, is also about the handler. So I imagine that,
you know, if I went out and got a puppy, trained it up, maybe not using current powder. Yeah.
(25:40):
You know, I mean, can anyone set themselves up as a detection dog handler?
No. So it's not for the faint-hearted.
It requires a lot of financial commitment, time commitment.
Commitment yeah you've got to be out in the dark
and when it's raining at night you've got
(26:02):
to be out in the day as well and it's just yeah
like I say picking up on very slight changes to the dog
behavior and also switching off your ecology brain which I really struggled
with initially because obviously as ecologists we were looking at everything
really interested in everything going on and and I also love toads and Freya
started to pick up on that fact that I like toads so she she started to linger
(26:23):
a bit more around toads when we've been out doing translocation schemes.
So I've really had to shut off that emotion and yeah, basically take a note
where she's kind of lingered and then get her to carry on the search and then
put her away, go back and then get these, rescue these toads as well.
So it's been really interesting.
You've really got to obviously shut your ecology mind off and become the dog
(26:46):
handler and then trying to balance that as well with also being an ecologist on site, doing e-cow.
So you've got all your construction people watching as well
so the other day i literally turned up to a
site to do some precautionary searches and there
was about 15 site guys watching and then
guys are strippers as well i'll get ready to obviously swim the area down once
(27:07):
we've done the thorough search and it's just making sure that you're not distracted
by any of that you're really focused work focused on the dog make sure the dog's
in a good coverage of that that area and you're confident that,
you know, it's slightly absent,
that there's going to be needs in that area before they come in and.
And impact it yeah so it's a lot of
pressure so much pressure on it so yeah
(27:29):
you just gotta be really resilient and that respects and
that's taking a bit of time just to get used to the
amount of attention that we get with doing this
type of work yeah yeah i
can certainly see that people just get a lot of attention as you
say i mean because you see it's you know if it's one of
those things you know will it work won't it work you
(27:50):
know so i'm from a from a bystander's point
of view you know you just want to see how they you know how how effective a
technique is imagine but um it's i suppose looking at the licensing system sorry
to take it back slightly to the system itself now obviously we are where we
are at the moment in time in terms of the,
(28:13):
requirements what you need to you know the application and demonstrating the
you know know, efficacy of the survey technique itself, and also the length
of period between, I suppose, submission of a license application and then return.
So looking at it from a, I suppose, a client's point of view, what benefits.
(28:34):
Are there and also what improvements maybe could we be looking at,
I mean, obviously not ourselves, but that may be Natural England or the other licensing bodies.
Consider when it's looking at you know improving i suppose some delivery time
really yeah that's what's good really good with the liquor stuff because it's
(28:54):
just a two-week registration process,
and it tends to go through really smoothly some
more sort of liquor would be great to roll out but obviously
i don't think naturally they're looking into that at the
moment whereas your yeah your epsl that
takes it depends really sometimes it's
gone through quite quickly and taking 30 days I
(29:16):
think the one we did last year that that went through and considering we
were obviously using the dogs and we were proposing to
reduce the time I thought it might take a little while to get that application
back but I think because I work really closely with natural England in the past
and they know how much training things like that that I've done so it kind of
it went through relatively smoothly and quickly well I'd say the 30 day period,
(29:39):
yeah but it can sometimes drag
a bit and depending on who's looking at the license application yeah
so i guess a bit more streamlined would
be great and yeah yeah
just trying to reduce delays i guess especially when we're trying to improve
our infrastructure you know like our pipelines that are bursting and things
(30:03):
like that be great to have yeah a bit more quicker could kind of turn around
for urgent work schemes that could potentially have environmental impacts.
So that's interesting then to say that, I mean, I suppose it's one way,
I suppose it can be quite logical in terms of delays and also in terms of obviously knowing the,
(30:25):
the license the applicant should we say that you know the
licensee you know the nominated ecologist named
ecologist there obviously that can help
so so therefore experience and so they've got
an understanding that yet this person is
a competent person and yeah they always getting provide
you know good information so so in one
(30:46):
way it is reliant partially on that
relationship building between maybe you know that
slow i mean whether whether it is a direct or indirect relationship between
natural england or actually the licensing team
an individual within licensing team yeah yeah and then it would be that yeah
depends who picks it up as someone who might not be very experienced and may
(31:11):
not know what i've done previously yeah they might not understand And yeah,
we're kind of, yeah, what I've done.
So they're saying, well, this person's got a dog and they're saying that they
want to do this. And they'll be like, oh, and then kind of delay it,
put it to the back of the pile out of there.
And yeah, but I think it's more joined up than what it used to be.
And yeah, I think it feels like it's more of a joined up approach.
(31:35):
I deal with a lot with Matt Gill from Natural England.
And he's been brilliant with obviously the detection dog side of things.
Things and he primarily deals with that detection dog element now. Yeah.
So I've got other associates in other companies that are doing,
you know, great christening detection and it's actually,
we're, you know, we're asked the same sort of stuff now, whereas I think previously
(31:59):
when I got into it, I dealt with one person from Natchling and she was asked,
they were asking for a lot of stuff originally and this other company wasn't,
so it was not very kind of joined up.
Yeah so it's great that that's it's kind of developed
a more of a yeah standard kind of approach
and obviously with the guidelines that i can't remember
(32:20):
if i've mentioned that we've produced some guidelines as well
for those looking at getting into great question mute detection so
if you're trying to apply for a license i would have killed for this right at
the beginning it basically gives you all the information
that you need in order to yeah apply for that
license keep nudes in captivity to do
great question mute detection so i'm kind of taking you through
(32:40):
that and it's the advisors for the use of detection dogs
for conservation it's on that website and it's
myself and obviously louise um dr robert
yell rachel flavell from ports of
conservation aaron klein as well from ports of conservation luke gorman from
atkins so they've been a big procurer in the use of detection dogs as well they've
(33:01):
been yeah real advocate for the uses and yeah and cat stanhope as well from
atkins so yeah it was a really nice document that we were able to to produce the governing bodies.
We had NatureScot review, but we had Art Trust review, we had Natural Environment
review. Fortunately, we didn't hear back from NRW.
Yeah, which was a shame. Yeah, but we had really fantastic feedback from the other bodies.
(33:24):
So where's that document again? I mean, if you could provide me with the link,
I'll put it into the show notes as well. But what was the website again?
It's Advisors for the Use of Detection Dogs for Conservation. It's ADDC.
ADDC, okay.
I suppose we're coming towards the end of our conversation. You've been very
(33:45):
generous with your time, so thank you.
Early on in the morning as well, first thing.
In terms of, I mean, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn profile here,
and obviously you mentioned here about new detection dog shadowing consultation opportunities.
So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you said it's been your third year running.
(34:07):
So what's what's the aim behind this
then this is just it's an opportunity for people
to actually come out with me in the field and basically see
the dogs work and see the dogs locate great crescent newts
in the wild above ground below ground yeah it's just
i also would have killed for this when i got into
it just to actually see what's required and instead
(34:28):
of you know it's just instead of having that whole investment
into it without actually knowing exactly what what is
required it's a fantastic way to actually see the
dogs work the type of dogs that you need yeah the
type of you know non-invasive indications that they give and
we can be out always we can talk about everything as well during
a biosecurity obviously welfare rotation of the
(34:49):
dogs great crescent new ecology licensing like everything
we cover and i've had people over from austria she
later came over with vivier and the czech republic as well so they were doing
crescent new detection over there so yeah it's been really good i've got a lady
coming over from australia this year in may she come out with shadow me which
is crazy yeah but yeah it's really really fascinating it's a fantastic way to
(35:13):
and it's a one-to-one kind of session as well so yeah.
Yeah and they can have a little go handling and obviously my
supervision can get a feel for for it
see whether it is something that they want to invest in a very
honest person in terms of like time yeah every
aspect of investment that you have to give just see
whether you really want to get into it because it is a lot it's
(35:34):
a big long journey from the start to obviously getting out
there operationally and the learning never ends even
when you're out there operation still still learning now and I
will forever be learning so yeah it's
continued learning isn't it so yeah I mean I mean by the time this podcast goes
out I'm sure you would have filled up all your spaces there but is this something
(35:56):
that you run I mean I said it's a third year running but you know I mean I'm
looking for 2025 I mean is this probably look I mean don't say you know fully.
But imagine it's something you may be looking at repeating again maybe next
year yeah yeah Yeah, definitely.
And usually I'd stop sort of May time, because that's when my trials will commence.
So I get really busy up until sort of September, October, and then it dies off a bit.
(36:20):
So then I offer another kind of autumn session as well before they go into brumation.
So yeah, it's a nice kind of, yeah, either end really.
So if you are interested, I'm the back end of this year as well,
before the winter kind of hits again.
So yeah, and And 2025, I hope they'll be, depending on where I am and what we're
doing at Wessex, because they're looking at expanding the dog facilities at Wessex.
(36:45):
So I might be a bit busy next year. I'm not sure yet.
Well, I can see that. I mean, again, it seems like, I mean, globally,
you've given a lot of presentations, you know, I'm sure, you know,
video conferencing as well, you know, on that aspect.
But also within, you know, obviously within the UK, it's the, is it Reptile?
(37:06):
You know is it the uh reptile amphibian yeah the workers
meeting yeah workers meeting yeah it was it was so it was lovely jim foster
the actress directors he actually invited me to the gibbet which was so lovely
his i just think i think back in 2019 when i went to the one at the workers
meeting that's when i met robert i think the the use of dogs it was still not.
(37:29):
Considered at that point and obviously with all the research that i've done
the paper that produced used last year it's really got the attention of people
and really want to understand it a bit more and so I give a lot of the scientific
results that we've got and also operational findings so it's a really nice kind of,
yeah i can i can give both of those aspects it's not just
(37:51):
a controlled research trials it's also that operational things that
we've had and obviously i work operationally but
also i'm a researcher so it's a nice kind of combined aspect
but i'm also uh we've got a detection dog symposium at the world's herpsological
congress in august that's set up so we've got all detection reptiles to be in
detection the dog handlers come in come across the globe globe to basically
(38:14):
be in the symposium yeah which will be fantastic that's held in Borneo.
Yeah it'll be really really really lovely to
meet everyone and everyone that I admire in the field and
just really kind of talk about what they've learned yeah what
they can recommend and we can learn off each other and kind
of yeah move forward really it's all about sharing knowledge I think
(38:36):
and I think that's how this will grow is by sharing being able
to share knowledge and some people can can be a bit closed off sometimes
and not want to expose what you know
they're doing or how they're doing it i think in order
to we've got to think about obviously it's great question either we're.
Trying to protect here and for being the reptiles though
it's yeah and they're a massive decline so the more
(38:56):
we kind of share the more we understand about how good the dogs can be
the capabilities and the better for them
yeah conservation status and wow i
tell there's a lot going on there's a a lot there's a lot
that you know you you know you get subjected to and
uh you hear about and i think this this work is an amazing you
know it's i say it's something i think we're going to be hearing a lot more about
(39:18):
you know we have in the past few years but uh you know
i think it's going to be you know become more important in
terms of you know conservation work you know as i
say not just roots but um other species and you know
biodiversity restoration i'm sure
too too but um nikki it's been a
pleasure talking to you today i do apologize
(39:38):
we're cutting short in our time but uh it's it's we but i just wish you and
and freya and obi and yuki all the best for this forthcoming season but but
for now thank you for joining me on the ecology academy podcast probably thank
you for having me as well it's been really yeah it's been great talking to you.
If you like our show and want to help, then please click on the subscribe button
(40:02):
and rate us on your favourite podcast player, as that's how you can inspire
ecologists in the making,
help retain great talent and provide insights of our industry to a much wider
audience of why ecology really does matter. Thank you.
And remember, learning is a lifelong endeavour, so stay curious,
(40:23):
be adventurous and build bridges.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.