Moore Outdoors With Chester Moore 10/11/24--Chester talks about using tracking dogs for a higher purpose.

•  Chester Moore talks with a conservation visionary using tracking dogs for a higher purpose.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to More Outdoors on News Top five sixty klv I.
This is Chester Moore and I'm really excited about today's guest.
We've had him on before about a year ago. But
the work this man and the organization he represents does
is absolutely incredible. If you listen to this program, you
know I'm all about wildlife conservation and you know I
love dogs. I'm always talking about my bull master for

(00:22):
my Doberman. Love dogs and I love working dogs. So
on the light right now we have mister Pete Koppelilo.
He is the executive director for Working Dogs for Conservation.
Welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thanks, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Working Dogs for Conservation. Man, that's a mouthful. So explain
to us out there who are maybe not really familiar
with this, what Working Dogs for Conservation is all about.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah. Well, the short answer is that we train dogs
to do conservation work however and wherever we can, and
we take them all over the world to do it.
You know. The longer answer is that that in the
early days of our field and our organization, it was

(01:08):
primarily the detection work and primarily ecological work, finding scats.
You know, the big, the big development that really led
to this field was was when it became possible to
get DNA from fecal material and scats, and so at
that point, everybody, you know it, there was a good

(01:31):
reason to find all the scats that you could, whether
you were looking for grizzly bears or wolverines or wolves,
or African wild dogs or Siberian tigers and so so
we started using dogs to do that, and I say
we the broader collective conservation we I didn't join the
organization until twenty twelve, but it was founded by by

(01:55):
four women all from here in Montana, working working on
why life and figuring out, you know, better, less invasive,
less expensive, safer ways to find out about wildlife and
protect them.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, and I think that's a really really important thing,
is about the way to find out about wildlife. I mean,
these dogs are actually out there, maybe in the middle
of you know, Siberia somewhere. Because of the genetics, they
can get out a scat, for example, use their nose
to find and maybe find even subpopulations of endangered animals

(02:32):
like the Siberian or Amure tiger that people didn't know existed.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, that's exactly right, that's exactly right. And you know,
back in the day, you know, we we were happy
and impressed when we could identify a scat to species.
And nowadays we can not only identify it to species,
but we can tell you if it's a male or female.
We can identify it as an individual, so we can
know how many different individuals the scats that we collect

(03:00):
came from. And we can even do things like pedigree
and know who that individual is related to. So you know,
for example, if you give us a bear scat, a
dog finds a bear scat in an unlikely location, we
can tell you whether that's a Northern Continental divide grizzly

(03:21):
bear or a Yellowstone grizzly bear for example.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Wow, that's pretty that's pretty impressive there.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So but you pair that technology now with the old
school technology of a dog's nose, I mean kind of
almost going back to basics, but refining what that dog
is built for.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, it's amazing. It really is amazing. And you know,
it's a it's a it's just a it's a cool combination.
You know that we've been living with these canids for
forty thousand years and and and co evolved with them.
You know, dogs morphology is different. They've got muscles that
wolves don't have in their eyes to communicate with us us.

(04:00):
You know, it's just it really is. It's very cool.
And you know, I say it all the time. People
people love to hear about how sensitive and amazing dogs
noses are, and they really are. But the truth is,
the really extraordinary thing about a dog, the thing that
enables us to do this work with them, is not
necessarily their nose. Lots of species have amazing noses. What's

(04:23):
amazing about a dog is the relationship to us and
the desire to be around us and to work with us,
and to communicate with us, and to you know, to
work through all those you know, we go through these
hand handed ways of asking them questions and they they
figure it out and they work with us on it
and get the job done in spite of how how

(04:43):
poorly we speak dog.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, exactly. It's like you guys are speaking a really
bad Doberman dialect here today. But one of the things
I found interesting when I first met with you guys
through our mutual friends at the Wild Cheap Foundation, was
it you're not necessary fairly using like a specialist breed.
You guys are using like rescue dogs.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yep, yep, that's right. We actually select for their behavior
and behavioral characteristics. And really it's simple. It's over simplification
a little bit, but what we really look for is
crazy ball drive or toy drive, you know. And and
that's because this is this this job is really just

(05:27):
a game for them. Basically. The the crux of what
we do is is they figure out they're they're they're excited,
crazy excited to play their game, you know, whether it's
Patch or tug or whatever. And and and we create
a game where if you find the target odor, or

(05:48):
track the poacher, or or do discrimination we can talk.
We'll get into the discrimination stuff a little later, but
you know, you do the thing that I'm asking you for,
and we get to play the game. And and you know,
so that's that's not unique to any particular breed. And
you know, we're relatively small. I mean in the conservation world,

(06:09):
we're big for a conservation dog organization, but you know,
relative to other working dog organizations like the US military
or Customs and Border Protection, were tiny. And so even
we just can't we're not an important customer when it
comes to buying you know, these high end, fancy bread

(06:29):
dogs from Europe. So even if we wanted to, we
really you know, those those folks don't return my phone
calls no matter what. And so you know, around nine
to eleven, after nine eleven the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
there was a global shortage in detection dogs, specialty bread
detection dogs, and the price for them went up to

(06:51):
twenty five fifty thousand dollars. So we just didn't have
that kind of money back in the day. And those
huge prices also drove a lot of disreputable breeders into
the market.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
So pretty much, you know.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Everybody in Eastern Europe who could get their hands on
shepherds or mouths were breeding them. And what we saw
is a resurgence of a lot of bad stuff like
hip dysplasia and elbow displaysia, you know, congenital genetic problems
and all that. And like I said, we don't have
access to the reputable, high end breeders, and we're not

(07:25):
going to do business with the disreputable ones. So it
just made perfect sense, and it fit philosophically with a
lot of the early dogs were rescued anyway, so it
all fit and it all came together and we've doubled down,
and I never say never. You know that there are
great dogs that are rescued, but you know, there are
also certain circumstances where it makes a lot more sense,

(07:46):
like for example, with a green handler, where you really
need to know a dog's early history and all that.
So I don't want to throw shade on the people
who who buy bread dogs. There are great bread dogs.
There are lots of good reasons to do it because
you know their history, you can them from the very beginning,
and that's really a powerful thing and people do amazing
things that way. But for us, you know, primarily our first,

(08:08):
our go to is to rescue them.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
No, that makes I want to get that out because
I think that's a really cool part of what you do.
And also the fact that the ability to smell out
these things is it necessarily just a trait of like
a Belgian malanoy or a bloodhound or whatever it happens
to be. So just real quick, give me just an
overview of some of the breeds that are out there
working for you guys right now.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Well, I'm proud to say that the most common breed
in our kennel.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Is a mutt muting out.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, we take mixed breeds, but we've got shepherds, we've
got mouths, we've got a lot of labs. We've got
at least one German short hair. You know, and people,
you know, dog people are all are all funny, and
I include myself in that. You know, the bloodhound people
will say bloodhounds noses are this much better than everybody else's.

(08:57):
And you know a lot of people, police and military
folks are are really believe in their mouths and shepherds
and they want to you know that they say, hey,
you know a bloodhound, this might be predisposed to groundcent
or you know a certain way of searching. I want
a dog that's going to use all the tools in
front of them. You know, the truth is every single

(09:18):
one of these dogs is incredibly talented, even your you know,
your little lap dogs and dogs that we don't think
of working dogs have this ability. What's really exceptional that
we look for that and is that drive, that drive
to work, the persistence you know, to not only just
want to play with the ball, but like to look

(09:40):
for it for five, ten, fifteen minutes, maybe all day long.
You know, it's it's it's those characteristics that really that
really drive them. The truth is, you know, I don't
think we go anywhere close to the lower end of
what dogs are capable of.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
When we come back More Outdoors a News Top five six,
we talk more with Pete Coppolila with Working Dogs for Conservation.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty
of Chester More. Follow me at the Chester More on Instagram.
Go to KLVI dot COMFLIC on the podcast link for
archives of this program at iHeartRadio. Follow me also higher

(10:14):
Calling Wildlife on Facebook and talking with Pete Copolilo from
Working Dogs for Conservation. So we've established you guys are
using rescue dogs and kind of the mission for what
you do and what are some of the specific missions.
I mean, we mentioned finding scat and helping locate populations
of animals and obscure areas and things like that, but

(10:35):
I know that right now you guys actually have some
dog or a dog or two in Texas helping sniff
out zebra muscles.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yep, that's correct. We work very closely with a partner
named Laura Spate, who's who's wonderful and has done a
lot of work. As as you know better than I do,
Texas is right at the edge of the distribution for
zebra and quaga muscles, and they are they're no fun.

(11:04):
They are you know, ecologically they're bad and they they
cause millions of dollars literally millions of dollars damage to
human infrastructure. And the interesting thing, you know, also scary
thing about zebra and quagga muscles is that we can

(11:24):
see them when they encrust. You know, most of us
have seen the picture.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Of the pipe that's almost completely plugged by them, So
that's the adult, the adult individual that they disperse themselves
through an invisible larval stage.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
At least it's invisible to us, to humans called a villager.
We can't see it. We can't see it when it's
in water, we can't see it when it's settled on
a surface. But we demonstrated that a dog can smell it.
So so so a number of years ago, working here
in Montana and in Alberta, we demonstrated that the dogs
could do this. And what's really cool about it is

(12:02):
not only are they more sensitive than a human inspector,
but they're faster. They're much much faster, so a visual
search of a big say a you know, a catamaran
or a house boat or something like that. You know,
it might take an inspector an hour to really check
that thing thoroughly, and like I said, they would still
miss the invisible larvae. A dog can do a boat

(12:26):
like that in a handful of minutes. And so you know,
when the people are rolling up to the check station
and there's an inspector between them and their day on
the water, a lot of times people start to get
grumpy as there's a big line and you know, come on,
let's get moving. And the inspectors, you know, understandably so
they may not be able to inspect every boat, so

(12:48):
they just start waving them through. But when you've got
a dog there, number one, they don't pile up because
it's happening faster. But number two, if people do have
to wait, they're going to get out of the truck
and they go, hey, look there's a dog working over there.
And then you know they're watching. And the folks in
Alberta did a did a great thing by by creating
playing cards for them, and so we do that for
all the dogs now, and Laura's dogs too, and and

(13:12):
so everybody gets a little playing card you know that says, hey,
you've been sniffed by Darby or you know, or SEUs
or or Diesel. And so it's really cool because you know,
it takes something that would make people grumpy and makes
it a positive, fun experience for them.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
So if they sniff out a larval zebra muscle, then
what will the next step be in terms of making
sure this isn't going to a lake?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, the inspector then says, you gotta you've got to
powerwash your boat before it can before it can go
in the water. And in different jurisdictions they have different
practices for it. Sometimes they get what looks like a
big old zip tie that goes on on the on
the outboard that says this boat's clean and has been inspected.
And other times it's just it's just uh, people operating

(13:57):
on the honor system because stay by state, the regulations
sort of vary. But the truth is, you know, boaters
and anglers, they want to do the right thing. Nobody
wants the zebra and quagga muscles encrusting everything. It's a mess,
it's terrible. They cut your feet. They cost everybody a
lot of money. It's we're all aligned on not wanting

(14:17):
them to invade.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, a lot of damage, and it changes the ecosystem
so much. I mean it clears the water up to
a level to where a lot more aquatic vegetation, including
non indigenous vegetation, grows. I've been on a lake in
New York that was basically had you know, I had
some vegetation, but it was so thick now that you

(14:39):
couldn't even fish the lake because of zebra muscle infestigations.
Just a lot of weird stuff. With these dogs helping
sniff this out. Now, you talk about it being on
a boat, being encrustling on a dock or something like that.
Is it possible to take them in a boat on
a lake where you think it might have got introduced
and actually smell them in the water.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Well, we do do that on shoreline. We do shoreline searches.
So here in Montana, we had a couple of a
scare you probably know about environmental DNA. Folks will use
these what they call fat bags or or you know,
it's it's like basically a sponge that'll that'll catch fragments
of DNA, And we had records of there was an

(15:20):
indication in Tiber Reservoir and Canyon Ferry two reservoirs here
in Montana that there was there had been muscles there so,
but nobody had seen muscles. It hadn't been seen on
a boat. They weren't on recorded on on you know, anywhere.
So so what we did was used our dogs to

(15:41):
do shoreline and infrastructure searches, which makes sense, right because
that's that's where a boat goes in. It's probably gonna
you know, dump its ballast tank or its bait tank,
or it's things like that near the shore and near
the the near the pier and stuff like that. So
we can use them in that way. People do use
dogs in boats. It's not our dogs, but it's been

(16:03):
done for orcas. Putting a boat. There was a rottweiler
named Tucker who lived in the front of a of
a of a boat and the and he would by
going back and forth, help direct that the boat captain
toward orca scats that would float. They float for a
time wow before they sink. So it's it's a it's
a that's a cool collaboration right there to have them

(16:27):
find that kind of stuff on the water. So, yeah,
they do all sorts of stuff like that. And then
you know, if you expand, you guys have in Texas
a great canine program in Texas Parks and Wildlife Department,
and some of those dogs are human remains detection dogs.
And you know the stories you get from from human

(16:48):
remains dogs finding people who've been underwater for for long
periods of time, or they're just extraordinary, they just blow
your mind.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, the thing that blew my mind when I introduced
when I got to introduce you with Wild Sheep Foundation
event the Sheep Show was talking with you guys that
there was actually dogs trained to sniff out brook trout
in the water.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. That that project grew
out of a conversation that a conservation biology meeting with
a great fellow named Carter Cruz who works for the
Turner in Dangerous Species Fund, and he restored native cutthroat

(17:32):
to a particular watershed on a property owned by Ted Turner,
and he took a little bit heat for it, but
he wanted to In order to do that, he had
to he had to remove all the brook trout and
he wanted to make sure that they weren't coming back,
and so you know, normally the conventional way to do
that is electro fishing, you know, and and I'm sure

(17:53):
you've seen seen that happen a lot, you know, in
the water with probes and stunning the fish and all
of that stuff. And it's slow, it's expensive, you know,
under some circumstances, it can be a little bit dangerous.
You know, sometimes they shock the fish too hard and
you get mortality from it. So he said, what do
you think you think we could do this? And I said,
you know, I have no idea. And long story short,

(18:15):
you know, we went through this progression of starting with
a fish in a bucket and then and then removing
the fish and saying can the dog detect that there
was a fish in this bucket? And then it ended
up on the flying d with us having fish in
traps hidden up under the bank and running the dog
up this little creek and sure enough they were alerting
where the where the fish were. So so short answer is, yeah,

(18:38):
you can. You can do that.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
So they're able to actually distinguish a brook trout from
a cut throat.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
We did a brook trout from rainbow trout. Was our comparison,
but yes, they can, they can discriminate to species. And
you know, I always say that's kind of we are saying, Wow,
they can tell them apart just by their their their scent.
But you know the truth is, you can tell what
fish is on the line just by a tiny glance
when you see it six or eight feet down in

(19:06):
the water, right and you know, you might know from
the tug or the flash of the color or whatever.
And we only use about twelve or sixteen percent of
our brains for vision, and a dog uses sixty percent
of its brain for old faction. So you can imagine
the degree to which they are tuning in to the

(19:28):
subtleties of that odor. So it makes perfect sense that
they can they can do it well.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
We come back on More Outdoors on News Talk five
sixty KLVA talking more Pete Coppolillo with Working Dogs for
Conservation cane iems are doing incredible things for wildlife out there,
from stopping wildlife trafficking, busting poachers to working on behalf
of wild sheep and evasive exotics. And when we come

(19:54):
back on More out Doors are talk more with Pete
from Working Dogs from Conservation here on more outdoors on
news Talk I have sixty KLVI. Welcome back tomorrow outdoors
on news Talk five sixty klv I talking my favorite topic,
wildlife conservation with my favorite kind of domestic animal dogs,
Working Dogs for Conservation. You can learn more about them

(20:15):
at WD four C dot org. That's WD four C
dot org. Working Dogs for Conservation. We have the executive director,
Pete Copolilo on the program. We just heard a mind
boggling story about dogs able to sniff out. Let's just
go back to the podcast of the program listen to that.
The way I got connected with you, Pete was the

(20:38):
Wild Cheap Foundation, And the biggest problem with wild sheep
in North America is disease transferred from domestic sheep and
domestic goats and now looking like odd dad barbarysheep. And
somehow you guys got connected with the Wild Sheep Foundation.
So don't just talk a little bit about your work
that you've done are continuing to do working with Wild Cheap.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, yeah, well thanks for asking about that. Wild Cheap
Foundation has been an amazing partner on this project and
it really came from a conversation with with Kurt Olt
who said, hey, you know, this was back in I
think twenty eighteen, and he said, hey, you know watching

(21:22):
all the press that the cancer dogs, you know, you
probably have seen some of it. The dogs at pen
Vet and other other places do amazing things detecting cancer
in human patients. And he said, do you think it's
possible for to do this with Wild Sheep? And we said, well,
let's let's find out. And so, you know, unlike a

(21:44):
lot of other a lot of other you know, foundations
or funders, Wild Sheep Foundations has been has been wonderful
because they're willing to take a risk on this, and
we said, let's figure this out. And so they provided
us with some financial support but also with incredible partnerships,
relationships and access. So a bunch of of the agencies

(22:08):
here in the West, Tribes and both state and federal
agencies said, yeah, we're struggling with the same problem here.
And what what we learned, what I didn't really realize,
was it's really the diagnostics are hard for for for TV,
it's a it's a kind of TV. It's Michael Plasma
O V. Pneumonier or m OV is the bug that's

(22:28):
relatively benign in you know, not without effects on domestic sheep,
but it doesn't it doesn't kill them, they don't keel over.
But when it gets in in wild sheep, you get
what what what you know? We get whole herd all
age die offs. They've dropped dead. And so so we said,
let's find out. So we are in this this two

(22:49):
year process of working on it and the and the
quick answer is, yeah, the dogs are really good at this.
We started with domestic sheep. We demonstrated that they could
tell based on a breath sample, so just the odor
captured in a mask, and we did that during the
pandemic because we USEMOV as a model for COVID to
see if they could do that with first line healthcare workers.

(23:14):
But then we moved on to nasal swabs and scat.
And the nasal swabs are cool because that's you know,
it's upper respiratory, that's where the infection really is.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
And you know which animal it came from.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
That kind of stuff exactly and we know exactly the
status of that animal, and that's how we used to
train them and everything. But what we're really working hard
at and what I'm quite honestly the most excited about
is to do it with scat is to figure out
if an animal just from their scat is infected or not.
And what's powerful about that is you don't have to
catch the animal to do it. So as you know,

(23:48):
and everybody at the Wild Sheep Foundation knows better than
we do because they've paid for a lot of these captures.
It's expensive. It's expensive to capture, you know, sheep. It
can also be dangerous. You know, you get helicopter crashes
and you know, stuff like that. Cheap, get hurt, all
of it. But you know they're all pooping all the time, right,
so we can we can either run a dog through

(24:09):
the landscape or just collect scat and bring it back
to a dog and figure out are there infected sheep
in this in this part of the landscape, and then
we can make management decisions accordingly. Or I don't say
we because I run a nonprofit. I'm not in charge
of anything. I don't have authority or management authority over anything.
But the managers can do that and that's and that's
really great because that enables them before you call the helicopter,

(24:33):
before you've you know, brought everybody in and you know,
these these capture operations are huge.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
The logistics, oh yeah, they're massive.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Massive, So it really it's it saves it can help
help save a lot of money and and uh and
and really target things to where you know, you've got
healthy animals, either as a source for new reintroductions, or
if you've got an infected herd, to be careful about
augmenting that herd or putting new inm in or doing
more monitoring whatever. It's it's really a multipurpose tool, depending

(25:04):
on the context. So we're excited about it.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
You guys have recently done some work with the captures
in Nebraska and how did how did that go?

Speaker 2 (25:14):
It was amazing, you know. The fearless leader on that
was Todd Nordene and he he's he's a he's a
great manager and a great scientist, but also an incredible logistician.
I mean, getting everybody there, getting the everybody lined up
ready to handle, you know, and then having to hold
sheep for some time while while samples get sent away

(25:37):
because we're you know, we are early days at this,
and if we're using those captured animal samples, we need
to have it confirmed via a lab before we use
that sample to train a dog. So we're still in
these early days when we're gathering all these things. So
it's it's an amazing it's an amazing process. And from

(25:58):
our side, Michelle of Ar is a canine field specialist
and she's been so enthusiastic about this that this is
this is becoming her master's thesis is working with the dogs,
comparing that to other methods of finding out And what's
nice about a dog is you get an answer immediately,
and we're working on getting the training so that we

(26:20):
get them up. We've got accuracies over eighty percent, sometimes
for certain dogs over ninety percent, but we're going to
try to get that into the high nineties. You know,
better than the laboratory diagnostics.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Wow. And you know, just having been on a capture before,
the unbelievable amount of manpower, risk expense. Anything that would
cut down on all of the above would be a
very big positive because there is a sense of urgency
in the sheep world. I mean, wild sheep are facing
some pretty serious situation with disease and things like that.

(26:54):
So being able to partner with working dogs for conservation,
I can totally see how the Wild Cheap Foundation and
you know, also other chapters and affiliates out there, tribes,
state and regional agencies can benefit from this.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. I mean I didn't know that.
I didn't know the story. Everybody depends on Wattle, the
Washington Animal Disease Lab and Disease Diagnostic Lab two d's,
and they you know, they do fabulous work, but they're constrained.
You know, you have to get the samples there and
then they've got to run up and amplify the DNA

(27:27):
and do all that. So what happens because nobody wants
to move an infected sheep and go infect a whole
new landscape and a whole new population or anything like that.
So what happens is these animals get captured and then
as soon as you've got one animal per stock trailer,
you stop and you wait, and the helicopters on the

(27:48):
ground and everybody's sitting there while the samples go off
to Washington and they get analyzed and then they come back.
So you know, captures don't happen on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
because there's not time to mail it before the weekend
back you know, fed exit back and forth. So we thought, wow,
this is this is a big inefficiency. This is an
opportunity for dogs to help really streamline that that process.

(28:12):
And you know, new new understanding about the epidemiology of
MV and they're doing some amazing work in Hell's Canyon
and in British Columbia and on on detecting and how
these things roll through herds and how they get maintained
in herds and can undermine lambing. You know, I don't
know if you've had the folks who did the transmission

(28:34):
film on.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
But yeah, yeah, so everybody knows that story that you know,
we thought that they'd all die and then you start
to clean slate, but it turns out you've got these
chronic shutters and so we need to figure out who
those chronic shutters are.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
So you know, I'm really hopeful. It's it's kind of
a new day for wild sheep. And and you know,
Grey Thornton and and Kevin Hurley and and Kurt Alt
they deserve all the credit because they were really courageous.
They said, hey, let's go for this. We're going to
do this and do it right, and they're sticking by

(29:07):
it and figuring out all these things and it's cool,
it's really exciting to see.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
If you like more information about Working Dogs for Conservation,
maybe it'd helped them, go to WD four C dot org.
That's WD FOURC dot org. And if you like to
get involved in helping wild cheap and wild cheap conservation
from Western Texas into Canada, literally around the world, you

(29:34):
can learn more at the Wild Sheep Foundation's website. That's
Wildshepfoundation dot org. Wildsheepfoundation dot org. Both of these organizations
doing cutting edge research and are very open about all
their work they're doing, and they give us lots of
great interviews here on More Outdoors. We'll come back. We'll

(29:55):
wrap up our conversation with Pete Copolilo from Working Dogs
for Conservation, an incredibly fascinating topic. Welcome back to More
Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv I. This is
Chester Moore talking with Pete Kopolilo. He's the executive director
for Working Dogs for Conservation. Just did a segment about

(30:15):
the work they're doing with the Wild Cheap Foundation, working
to find disease detection and which is a huge, huge
thing in the wild cheap conservation. We've talked about that
with Grey Thornton and others on the program. Before, and
we're gonna talk more about what they're doing here in
terms of like maybe anti poaching work with dogs, which

(30:37):
you know you think about security dogs, bomb sniffing dogs, Pete,
I know you guys have done work in the realm
of wildlife trafficking. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for asking about that. Yeah,
it's a everybody knows what a drug dog is like
or a bomb dog because we've seen him work out
in public, and anti trafficking dogs do very similar work,
you know that can we were our initial foray into
that world was actually helping the rangers on the ground

(31:08):
and Zambia find wire snares and and the dogs proved
to do that in about a quarter of the time
that the handlers did, and so that was very useful.
But that was also at the time when we had
the global you know, global trafficking of lots of species
of wildlife, but particularly elephants and rhinos. So we trained
on ivory, rhino horn and trafficked animal products and and

(31:31):
you know that that kind of work is really important,
it's fundamental. It happens just like trafficking drugs or or
or you know, guns, or ammunition or things like that.
But at the same time we also started training them
on guns and ammunition so that we could intervene and
if someone was trying to smuggle guns into a protected
area or you know, or or ammunition or something like that,

(31:53):
we could intervene before animal gets killed. And what's really
exciting is nowadays we've got two new technologies that help
us really penetrate farther in and intervene before animals get killed.
The artificial intelligence cameras can identify when of humans in
the image. And as you probably know, it's illegal to
enter protected areas on foot in Africa, so if somebody

(32:16):
crosses into the protected area legally, we can scramble a
tracking dog and get them on there before they kill something.
So that's really really exciting. And then the other one
is is working on using air evacuated vacuumed out from
a container shipping container and passing it through a filter
and then presenting those filters to the dog and seeing

(32:38):
if there's contraband while life contraband inside, and so that
helps us. You know, a lot of stuff gets trafficked
in containers and very few containers get searched, so we're
really excited to be make some inroads on anti poaching
and ending while ife crime.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, you know, this is such a multifaceted issue, and
something that's really concerning me is, you know, the nation
of India has don our really good job on stemming
the tide of tiger poaching there, and other Asian nations
have done pretty good as well. So the some of
the Asian markets that are dictating that they have tiger

(33:14):
parts are now shifting and they're going in es, Central
and South America after jaguars. And in Bolivia alone there
was one particular bus that had dozens of jaguars worth
the claws and they're actually openly advertising for this. So
is this a situation also as well where you could
like train be it like a customs place and train

(33:35):
on finding like cat parts or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it is as diverse as
you can imagine. A retired CIA agent who helps us
with some of our work one time said, if you
can think of it, you can bet that a trafficker
has tried it and probably gone two or three steps further. Right.
You know, when I started working in Africa back in

(34:02):
like in the nineties. You know, rhino horn was just
considered an aphrodisiac, and now people take it for blood pressure,
they with their when they're consuming alcohol. They think it
increases your alcohol tolerance. They take it for for you know,
all sorts of other things like so the the uses
and the number of species and access to it. With

(34:24):
global trade, there's so much more stuff moving around the
world and so the opportunity to ship wildlife products with
it has just increased exponentially. So this is a this
is a challenge we're going to be working with for
a very long time.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, very interesting stuff. And you know that the global
nature of the trade, and you know, it's almost like
people are actually, I know, this is for a fact,
this is happening even on a level of like exotic
pet theft in Texas. They're putting into orders you know,
like I want you know, this animal or whatever and
someone with you know, there's the money for it. There'll

(35:01):
be someone out there, you know after that. So it's
really cool to see that you guys and different people
using working dogs are able to uh, you know, be
a tool in the hands of not only like you know,
like the wild Sheet Foundation for Disease detection, but also
law enforcement in the wildlife realm for stopping some of
the poaching, because while poaching in America is bad in

(35:23):
certain areas, for the most part, it's not contributing to
species extinction. Overseas, it's a major problem in terms of
being able to go because you've got groups like Boca
Haram and different terror groups even selling these parts because
of the money to help fund terror operations. So it's
a huge network. And I salute you guys for being

(35:44):
able to find ways to help curb that.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, well, thank you. And you know, a lot of
a lot of stuff gets trafficked out of We used
to think that, you know, the US was just a
destination country. We would buy these products from overseas, but
now our turtles are getting traffic to China. They're they're
valuable as pets, and so the rarer it becomes, the
more valuable it is. And so maybe just a quick

(36:07):
shout out to our we we helped found something called
the Conservation Canine Officers Association. Those are nine game wardens
I think it's thirty two different states, a number of tribes,
and then two Canadian provinces now and and the President
of the of the association is right there in Texas.

(36:27):
His name's Royce Hilson. He's a handler and has great dogs,
and so you should reach out to him and have
him on because there's a lot going on in that
in that realm.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, we'll definitely make that happen because we support all
of this awesome work all of you are doing. It's
all about conservation. We can throw in dogs even cooler,
you know. So once again, Pete, if someone wants to
connect with Working Dogs for Conservation, how to do that?

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Oh, thank you, thanks for asking. We're on the web
at w D four C. That's the number four w
D four C dot org and we do mostly social
on Instagram and Facebook at just Working Dogs for Conservation
all spelled out.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, well, it's great work. You guys are awesome and
love to have you back on in the future. Working
Dogs for Conservations something that's really touched my heart. I mean,
it's amazing to see that these dogs, most of them
that are rescue dogs of all kinds, of mixed breeds
and everything else that are out there literally saving wildlife
all across many landscapes and doing great work to stop

(37:31):
the spread of invasive exotics right here in the great
state of Texas. So it's just really neat to be
able to see how people are using great innovations with
technology to help wildlife. We've had even people doing cloning work,
like with the blackfooted ferret on the program. But then
you go all the way back the other direction to
you know, this incredible natural created thing, the dog. I mean,

(37:57):
of course man's had a lot of role in breeding
and things like that, and you know, honing the dogs
certain abilities, but I mean, this isn't some kind of tech.
This is a dog. It's a great way to use it.
You heard Pete. He said he doesn't think we've even
got close to tapping into what dogs can do. So
very excited to see that work with working dogs for conservation.

(38:20):
You know, we're on the cusp of hunting season and
a lot of guys are using Labradors and Golden Retrievers
and chesapeaks and short hairs and lots of dogs out
in the field doing everything from retrieving dogs to you know,
trailing wounded animals. Dogs really are man's best friend. I

(38:40):
can't imagine my life without dogs, and I've had dogs
my entire life. I will always have dogs. They're a
special part of my life. And you know, they're big
babies at our house. You know, they're great guard dog
they're also big babies. We use them for our outreach.
It's amazing to see the smile that a dog puts
on kids face. It's a really really special thing. And

(39:03):
it's really cool to see man's best friend becoming wildlife's
best friend in certain situations. And you know, one of
the big problems with wild sheep is contact with domestic
sheep because of disease. We've talked about that in the show.
Well think about that. We've had sheep dogs for years,
right protecting sheep. Now we have dogs protecting wild sheep

(39:27):
like from domestic contact. Really amazing stuff, and folks, I
appreciate you. Listening to More Outdoors every Friday here from
six to seven pm Central Standard Time on news Talk
five to sixty KLVI. If you miss the whole program,
listen to the archive on iHeartRadio. Go our KLVI Dot
Conflict on the podcast link you'll see the archives of

(39:48):
the program. Follow me at the Chestermorn Instagram, Higher Calling
Dot at my blog, Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook. God
bless and have a Great Outdoors Weekend