Conservation Dogs Sniffing out New Possibilities for Science

Nicole and her dog Gromit. IMAGE: Supplied.

From guarding colonies of little penguins in Warrnambool and tracking injured koalas through bushfire-scorched scrub, to sniffing out rats aboard boats bound for Antarctica, conservation dogs are putting their powerful noses to work helping scientists better understand the natural environment.

Speaking with FlowFM's Jessica Dempster as part of National Science Week 2026, conservation dog handler and field ecologist Nicole Gill says there are many different types of conservation dogs, but most, like hers, are trained to detect clues left behind in the environment.

“Conservation dogs are dogs that work for positive conservation outcomes,” Nicole says.

“Most conservation dogs, like mine, are detection dogs, which means they sniff out clues that help us learn things about the environment.”

For Nicole, the path into conservation dog work was a niche and unexpected one, beginning with a background in botany and a long-standing interest in animals.

“I’m a reformed botanist. I used to study plants, but I was always secretly more interested in animals,” she says.

A few years ago, she says she had the opportunity to take a puppy she originally got to sniff out basic plants, and pursued a master’s degree investigating whether such a dog could help scientists find traces of endangered Tasmanian masked owls.

“Mask owls are super sneaky and secretive. They’re an ambush predator. They get around at night-time. They have massive territories. And most annoyingly, they never return your calls,” Nicole says.

Rather than searching for the owls themselves, Nicole trained her dog Zorro to sniff out the pellets they leave behind after feeding.

“Instead of finding the owl, if you’re trying to work out where they live, you can look for instead traces that they leave behind,” she says.

"If you find them, you can actually learn a lot about the bird. For starters, for an owl pellet to be there, it means the owl is using that area. So even if you can't find the bird, you can see that they're there. And if you take a bit of a closer look at the pellets, you can learn a lot about the bird itself.”

Nicole says DNA analysis of the pellets can reveal valuable information about the owl, including its gender, how closely it is related to other owls in the area, its diet, and other important factors like whether the bird is sick or has been exposed to poisons such as rodenticides.

“Although these things look like disgusting little fur and bone truffles, they're actually incredibly valuable sources of information for ecologists who want to learn more about the owls themselves," she says.

Nicole and her dog Zorro on a conservation mission. IMAGE: Supplied.

While using dogs to sniff out things that are usually untraceable to humans might seem simple, Nicole says it is not a task any dog and owner could take on at a whim.

“Occasionally, people will hear my job and they’ll go, ‘I would love to get paid just to walk around with my dog.’ I just smile politely because it’s actually a very complicated job that a lot of work goes into the training,” she says.

Asked whether the conservation dogs' skills come from intensive training or letting them channel their natural instincts, Nicole says it's “a little column A and a little column B”.

“Different breeds of dogs will have a predisposition to want to work on these kinds of projects," she explains.

“For example, (my dog) Zorro is a Springer Spaniel Border Collie cross. So Spaniels are often used as hunting dogs and so they love getting out there in the environment with their nose and running around, sniffing to try and find you the thing that you are looking for. Border Collies obviously a very intelligent breed, they love to work with you and they have amazing stamina.”

Alongside her owl research, Nicole also monitors bird and bat mortality around wind farms, where she says dogs can find wildlife human surveyors miss.

“Dogs will find up to 17 times more mortality than really small species than humans working alone.”

On one occasion, she says her dog Gromit led her to what first appeared to be an unassuming cow pat.

“I’m like, ‘Gromit, that is a poo.’ And he’s like, ‘No, it is a thing,’” she says.

After a grumpy bark from the dog, Nicole flipped over the cow pat to investigate and eventually found a bat foot with part of the leg attached.

“There’s no way I would have found that as a human. And so we would not have actually known that that species was being impacted.”

That information, she says, can help wind farms modify their operations to potentially reduce wildlife deaths.

“Obviously, just finding the species is not going to improve wildlife outcomes, but you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Nicole and her dog Gromit. IMAGE: Supplied.

In addition to tracking elusive owls and locating minuscule animal fragments, Nicole says the uses for conservation dogs are almost endless, with dogs being trained to detect diseases in both native vegetation and wildlife and also track down threatened species.

“The capacity for detection dogs to find things to help with conservation are really only limited by our imagination, she says.

As president of the Australasian Conservation Dog Network, Nicole added that initiatives like National Science Week provides an opportunity to show researchers what conservation dogs could offer.

“The conversation that I have today might spark an idea for a researcher who’s having trouble with, say, a threatened species," she says.

“I like to be able to get out there and tell people what is possible in this field.”

“I don’t think that science is actually completed until it’s communicated."