Whether they’re sniffing out improvised explosive devices, chasing bad guys, or guiding the physically or mentally handicapped through day-to-day life, dogs have proven to be an invaluable asset to our police, military, veterans, and everyday citizens. Here at Townhall we’ve always found it important to recognize the work our four-legged friends and their handlers do to serve our nation, which far too often goes overlooked.
However, canines are also serving in roles that we don’t traditionally associate them with; namely, conservation efforts.
Thanks to their noses, which can sniff out odor concentrations as small as one to two parts per billion, canines can be trained to find invasive species to eradicate, to detect hard-to-find plants and wildlife, and to discover threats to both, such as poison and illegal snares.
But being a conservation detection dog requires more than a keen sense of smell. The best dogs for this work are extremely high-energy and toy obsessed—oftentimes the ones that wind up in shelters across the nation.
Now, however, because of a new partnership between Working Dogs for Conservation and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, these dogs are being actively sought out across the country through a new program, Rescues 2the Rescue.