Beth McKeagueab, BSc, Caroline
Finlayb, PhD, MSc, BSc, Nicola
Rooneyc, PhD, PGCE, BSc
bethmckeague@gmail.com,
caroline@cddni.com,
nicola.rooney@bristol.ac.uk
aSchool of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University
Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
bConservation Detection Dogs Northern Ireland, Comber,
United Kingdom
cBristol Veterinary School, University of Bristol,
Bristol, United Kingdom
Funding: none
Corresponding author: Caroline Finlay,
caroline@cddni.com
Declarations of interest: none
Abstract
1. Conservation detection dogs
(CDD) use their exceptional olfactory abilities to assist a wide range
of conservation projects through the detection of a target specimens or
species. CDD are generally quicker, can cover wider areas, and find more
samples than humans and other analytical tools. However, their efficacy
varies between studies; methodological and procedural standardisation in
the field is lacking. Considering the cost of deploying a CDD team and
the limited financial resources within conservation, it is vital that
their performance is quantified and reliable. This review aims to
summarise what is currently known about the use of scent detection dogs
in conservation and elucidate which factors affect efficacy.
2. We describe the efficacy of CDD across species and situational
contexts like training and field work. Reported sensitivities (i.e.,
proportion of target samples found out of total available) ranged from
23.8% to 100% and precision rates (i.e., proportion of alerts that are
true positives) from 28% to 100%. CDD are consistently shown to be
better than other techniques, but performance varies substantially
across the literature. There is no consistent difference in efficacy
between training, testing, and field work, hence we need to understand
the factors affecting this.
3. We highlight the key variables that can alter CDD performance.
External effects include target odour, training methods, sample
management, search methodology and environment, and the CDD handler.
Internal effects include dog breed, personality, diet, age, and health.
Unfortunately, much of the research fails to provide adequate
information on the dogs, handlers, training, experience, and samples.
This results in an inability to determine precisely why an individual
study has high or low efficacy.
4. It is clear that CDD can be effective and applied to possibly
limitless conservation scenarios but moving forward researchers must
provide more consistent and detailed methodologies so that comparisons
can be conducted, results are more easily replicated, and progress can
be made in standardising CDD work.
Keywords : Search Dog; Sniffing Dog; Ecology Dog; Efficacy;
Methodology; Standardisation; Conservation