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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Melissa Houghton about using dogs for pest eradication on a remote world heritage island.
Science Highlight: Methodology and challenges of a complex multi-species eradication in the sub-Antarctic and immediate effects of invasive species removal
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Summary
By Maddie L.
Science Highlight:
The host introduces a scientific article discussing the challenges of a complex multi-species eradication on Macquarie Island, emphasizing its sub-Antarctic location.
Introduction to Melissa Houghton:
Melissa’s strong interest in invasive species management and biosecurity is highlighted. She worked on numerous pest eradication programs on islands around Tasmania, with Macquarie Island being the most ambitious.
Melissa shares her background and how her interest in environmental programs led her to apply for the Macquarie Island eradication program as a dog handler. Her experience with using dogs for pest detection began on Australian properties.
Dog Handling on Macquarie Island:
Melissa explains the training program for detection dogs with different handlers, focusing on Springer Spaniels and Labrador Retrievers chosen for their attributes suitable for the task. Handlers rotated annually due to contracts and the challenging environment.
Challenges of Working with Dogs on Macquarie Island:
The dogs adapted well to the unique island environment, even in the presence of penguins and seals. Unexpectedly, penguins attacked the dogs upon their arrival. The island’s diverse penguin species are mentioned.
Macquarie Island & Invasive Species:
Historical context of Macquarie Island as a seal hunting ground in the 1800s and the introduction of invasive species, such as cats, rats, and rabbits, by sailors. These invasives led to severe ecological damage, threatening native flora and fauna.
Eradication Project on Macquarie Island:
The focus shifts to the eradication project, aiming to remove rabbits, mice, and rats to protect the island’s unique ecosystem. Aerial baiting during the winter, when non-target species typically leave the island, was part of the strategy.
Overcoming Challenges:
Mitigation efforts were employed to reduce non-target kills after an initial failed attempt. The introduction of the Khaleesi virus effectively reduced rabbit populations, facilitating the eradication.
Challenging Training and Preparation:
The dog handlers underwent rigorous training with an emphasis on clear communication with dogs using voice, hand signals, and high-pitched whistles. Specialized equipment was essential, and maintaining the dogs’ motivation involved using rabbit pelts and rabbit pee collected from mainland Tasmania.
Persistence and Dangers:
The dog teams worked tirelessly, hunting for rabbits day and night, facing treacherous terrain and coastal cliffs. Some dogs encountered injuries or motivational challenges during the project.
Success of the Project:
The multi-year project led to the successful eradication of most of the island’s rabbit population. In the second year, the estimated rabbit population dropped dramatically from thousands to just 13. The eradication project was officially declared successful in April 2014.
Conservation Impact:
Melissa highlights how the project transformed the island’s ecosystem, with lush vegetation returning and the resurgence of birdlife. Her team continues to monitor the island’s invertebrates as indicators of ecosystem recovery.
Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt
Hello and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs join us every week to discuss detection, training, welfare, conservation, biology and everything in between. I’m Kayla Fratt, a co-founder of K9Conservationists, where we train dogs to detect data for land managers, researchers, agencies and NGOs.
Kayla Fratt
Today I have the joy of talking to Melissa Houghton about using dogs for pest eradication on a remote World Heritage Island. Melissa Houghton has a keen interest in invasive species management eradication programs and a biosecurity. She’s worked on numerous pest eradication programs on islands around Tasmania, Australia. Most notably, she worked in the sub Arctic for the Macquarie Island pest eradication project as a dog handler. At the time, this project was the most ambitious Island eradication program in the world, attempting to eradicate mice, rats and rabbits on an extremely remote World Heritage Island. Since the successful completion of the Macquarie Island pest eradication project, Melissa has worked with research teams to understand how the islands unique flora and fauna are responding to the removal of these invasive mammals.
Kayla Fratt
I’m super excited to get to this interview, but before we get to it, we’re going to dive into our science highlight. So for this highlight, we’re reading the article titled “Methodology and challenges of a complex multi-species eradication in the sub Antarctic, and immediate effects of invasive species removal,” which was written by Keith Springer and published in 2016 in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology. And this article, as you may guess, pertains to basically the point of our interview today. So to quote from the abstract “Vertebrate pest management on Macquarie Island has removed five vertebrate species since 1988: wika cats, rabbits, ship or black rats, and host mice. The latter three were eradicated and a successful combined eradication operation that commenced in 2006 and was declared successful in 2014. Eradication prep planning for the removal of rabbits, mice and rats took about five years with implementation. Another three years the eradication comprised of a two phase project with aerial baiting, followed by ground hunting using hunters and train detection dogs to remove surviving rabbits. So the dogs were used after poison baiting because a small number of survivors could be expected. And even a small number of surviving rabbits could result in faster population rebound, dogs help navigate the complex terrain and large island to find an additional 13 Rabbits post poisoning. And we’re going to talk a lot more about this with Melissa in moments here. So Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
Melissa Houghton
Hello, thanks for having me.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I’m super excited to hear about this project. Usually, I know a little bit more about the projects that my guests have completed. And I’m really excited to genuinely get into this and learn about this project with you because I have not heard of this prior to connecting with you. So why don’t we start out with a couple of basic questions. I’d love to hear a little bit of your story of how you got into conservation, and maybe how you got into dogs and how and when those two things came together for you.
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, I guess I’ve always been interested in playing my part in in assisting in environmental programs and actually saw Macquarie Island from a distance. And it’s part of Tasmania, actually, it’s a sub Antarctic Island, which is struck governed by Tasmania is one of Australia’s two sub Antarctic islands. And it’s just an incredible place. So occasionally, there’s footage of the wildlife. There’s the amazing landscapes of this island. And I just thought I’ve got to go there. But of course, not everybody can go there. It’s a very remote place. And there’s a small community that live on the island here around managing the station. But not anyone can go there. So when the eradication program began, and they were seeking dog handlers, I couldn’t believe my eyes because I thought this I’ve got a chance to be part of this program, I’d always lived on a property and use dogs for well, invasive species basically hunting. This is we have a few properties like that. In Australia, it’s quite common for people who live on properties to use dogs for rabbits or cats detection, things like that. Anyway, so I applied and then became part of the first team to go down post baiting of the island with detection dogs.
Kayla Fratt
But so was that your first time kind of being hired to do detection dog work?
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, yeah, I was very, very lucky. We actually that the interesting thing about that program was that people didn’t take their own dogs down because it was a long running. It would require a few years on the island with dogs to to declare it successful or not. They weren’t sure at the time. There were dogs were trained by hand by different trainers, and then handlers were hired. had to manage those dogs. So the people who were trained, they’ve hired sorry, as dog handlers, within trained up into the methods that those those trainers had used for those dogs. So there were three dog trainers that trained all those dogs. And every year, there were 12 or 13 people in the field team, and half of them were dog handlers that had two dogs each. So there was 11 dogs, and they were mixed species that we can talk about later that were were chosen for, for particular reasons to be mainly also to be able to take different handlers every year, because the handlers have to change every year.
Kayla Fratt
Gotcha. Why did the handlers have to change every year was that just because of permitting or because of handler contract?
Melissa Houghton
Contracts, and it’s extremely grueling environment down there. So some, some handlers and hunters because we were paired with hunters, beach dog handler, they did stay down for multiple contracts with no more than two. But when people first went down, you know, was you had a contract? It was just a year, and yeah, and the handle was changed every year. So the dogs had to be able to cope with that.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, that must have been challenging. were and are the dogs. Were the dogs consistent for you your whole year? Or did you change between dogs or throughout years,
Melissa Houghton
ya know, so the dogs were paired up with their handlers by the dog trainers, basically as to who they thought could be well matched with their personality and the handler skills. So I had to sew the team. So it was 11 dogs, and there were seven Springer Spaniels, for Labradors and a terrier. And most people had a Labrador and a Springer Spaniel. Because the Labradors would work more thoroughly, but slowly, but the spring has could cover a lot more ground. So they sort of worked in different ways. And so we’ve managed to different dogs and the terrier was because Macquarie Island has these unique rock stacks around the coastline. The terrier could be thrown up on basically to search for rabbits, or rodents.
Kayla Fratt
Add Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. So that makes sense, then I love I love kind of thinking about using the different natural hunting styles to Yeah, gosh, I’m not finishing my thought there. But I don’t think I’ve heard of a program before where they think that thoroughly about, you know, pairing handlers with two dogs, two different breeds two different search styles to really like, it sounds like a really well thought out project. That’s very impressive.
Melissa Houghton
It was they, I mean, it was the first time I’ve been involved in something like this, but I really admire there was so much planning had gone into it, I think, because it was such a roadmap, remote island logistics, so difficult, so expensive, you know, many, many years have gone by with people reporting decades, basically, on these non native species and the damage that we’re having. But to do the program was was very expensive, and someone had to come up with that money and coming up with money to for to protect an island, which most people will never set foot on. You know, it required a lot of concerted effort by lots of people to get it up and running. And then then once had the funding, the planning that went into it was extraordinary. Really, the dog trainers that trained the dogs, they had a set of skills that they had to make sure and that the dogs were up to standard for and a lot of that they said it was the most difficult they ever had to deal with, for the kind of dogs that they’ve trained before because they had to consider things like non target species, like how do you train a dog not to be interested in seals and penguins when you don’t live with seals and penguins and things like that it was very difficult program that dogs had to pass in order to be successful to go down there. It was, yeah, so they did a fantastic job with them. The first time a lot of those dogs had ever seen Ping was or seals was when we arrived on the island with us. And and it just showed how fantastic how their training how well they’ve been trained, because they were would use chickens or ducks or any other any other animals I can think of back in mainland Australia to train those dogs not to be interested but they weren’t entirely sure until we got there what would happen and actually, more often than not just because of the way that penguins and seals are never not coming across or not having any reason to fear humans or dogs. The penguins would come up and actually take a bunch of the dogs and attack them so some of the dogs are actually being Once was no one expected but yeah, it was was interesting to see that.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, oh my gosh, what species of penguins are down there? Kind of just trying to get a gauge on like size here?
Melissa Houghton
Oh yeah, so there’s four species of penguins, about 4 million penguins on this island, which is about 129 square kilometers. I’m not sure what that is more sorry. But yeah, there’s four species of penguins and so there was king penguins. And there’s Rockhopper penguins and the sort of Mad looking ones with the fluffy tails on their head. And Gentoo penguins and the other ones royal penguins, which are only found on McCrory Island.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I don’t think I’m familiar with the Royals. Yeah, that’s neat. So yeah, quite a quite a variety. And the king penguins can get quite large, right?
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, up to sorry, half a meter. Yeah. Told them. They’re very beautiful and regal looking, as their name suggests.
Kayla Fratt
So that’s a little bit about this ecosystem. Tell us a little bit more about kind of what makes Makara island so special. And, you know, what, what was the damage? What were some of the damages being caused by these invasive species? Like why was this such an important project?
Melissa Houghton
Sure. So Macquarie Island, like I said earlier is part of Tasmania, but it had been discovered in the 1800s and had been used as a seal hunting ground for seal oil, so had been leased for sailors for a long period of time, and but they very quickly decimated the seals and then moved on to the penguins. And there’s still to this day, there’s big equipment on the beach, heritage equipment now that was used to boil up penguins on the beach, for the oil when the seals were done. So the there’s three types of seal there as well. There’s the first seals, two types and elephant seals.
Melissa Houghton
And while they were there, the sailors brought with them, a lot of pets and some of them were because they wanted them there for company like cats. And some of them were there because they wanted food like rabbits, so Macquarie Island’s declared a nature reserve. And while managing the island, it was pretty obvious that a lot of these species were having huge impacts on the native flora and fauna. So there’s a lot of interesting marine mammals and penguins and things. But there’s also a lot of native species on the island, invertebrates and plants that are really unique, and heaps of seabirds, other seabirds like Albatross, and things use the island as its as a refuge and a nesting ground and lots of burrowing seabirds.
Melissa Houghton
And so things like cats and rats and rabbits were having huge impacts. Obviously, the cats were beating seabirds, and they were eradicated by the year 2000 with some movie used detection dogs and hunters. But it was not the same kind of program as what they were coming to face with at the end where they were they’d removed all these other invasive species but they had rats, mice and rabbits in enormous numbers. So the from monitoring rabbits there was a estimation of about 150,000 rabbits on the island and there was no way of knowing exactly how many mice and and rats but their impacts were not only on that directly on the seabirds but then indirectly on the vegetation affecting seedling recruitment.
Melissa Houghton
A lot of the vegetation sub Antarctic islands is very palatable to a herbivore like a rabbit. They’ve all evolved without herbivores. So they’re delicious. There’s a there’s a species there, which is endemic to the island, the Macquarie Island cabbage, which the sailors used to consume, to stave off scurvy. It’s like celery, it’s just up to you know, and be the tool. We’ve got these huge tasks, and the rabbits decimated those managers on the island had tried to introduce control measures, they’d regularly shot rabbits and they tried to introduce control measures like releasing viruses and things and so they could see when rabbit numbers were down, that the vegetation that there was some the ability for the vegetation to rebound and it used to be or could be very lush and and now with the rabbits that these numbers, you had landscape wide destruction, and even landslips and huge erosion like the whole landscapes were just denuded of vegetation.
Melissa Houghton
So then that affected seabirds because a lot of sea birds here there’s a lot of Bering sea birds and you also had albatross nesting on there’s very steep coastal slopes on Macquarie Island, going to plateau on the top and then these very big coastal slopes all the way around. And so very, very quickly, the rabbits just had an enormous impact. So the pressure came to do something about it, because it was managed by this time as a reserve. But also, there’s a lot of visiting tourist ships that go to the islands. So it had other values other than those natural values for those seabirds and marine species that use it as a refuge.
Melissa Houghton
But people could see that this incredible place was just not coping, essentially. So by after the rabbits, or sorry, after the cats had been eradicated, we only had the rodents and rabbits left on the island, and that instigated the idea to try to remove them. But actually, nothing of this size had ever been attempted before. There have been other replications of rodents around the world, they’ve been shown to be very, very successful on islands for species conservation, because rodents can be have so much effect on Ireland species that are often not accustomed to such predators. And but nothing had been done, not only this remote, but we’re trying to do three species at the same time.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That must have been really challenging. So can you walk us through maybe some of the steps that were taken, I understand that there was some aerial baiting that took place and maybe even some of those unsuccessful earlier things, as far as you said, introducing viruses and yeah, walk us through. I mean, especially, you know, I know you were mostly focused on the rabbits but you know, the the mice and the rats has got a bit so challenging.
Yeah, that’s right. Well, well, actually. For the rabbits there had been other diseases released in Australia, rabbits are enormous pest in Australia, and other diseases had been released in Australia with some ptosis and had been trialed down there with varying effect. But then another virus called the rabbit Khaleesi virus was thought not to work down there because of the conditions I think up Khaleesi virus like to warm, dry conditions, which inquiry Island is not Macquarie Island is one of the wettest, windiest places, you can think of, perpetual fog.
Melissa Houghton
So myxomatosis had had had impacts in the past, and then that rats and mice, there was no way of controlling them, essentially. And other places, rat eradications have been very successful, but mice are very, very difficult to get rid of. So when the eradication finally kicked off, in 2010, the idea was to bait the island in the middle of winter, because for the reason that most of the non target species such as you see birds and things, they leave the island for the winter. And that way, there’s a lot of birds there that carrying feeders at schools and giant petrels and things. So that way that anything that was baited that was fed upon by God, there wouldn’t be as many non target species, a lot of them are threatened or protected. But they’re all protected, that they wouldn’t be feeding on those campuses, and you wouldn’t have these non target deaths.
Melissa Houghton
So the eradication kicked off with baiting and the baiting occurred in winter, and they bowed to the island twice. And the reason for that was, so it was arrow baiting. So with them, they use GPS along lines to be extremely thorough, and they’ve worked out a rate of baiting that would meant that that every rodent and rabbit will hopefully be exposed to some bait. And the reason they’ve made it twice was because see, rats they’d like to cash back to they’ll grab a bunch of bait and bring it all back to the borough and die on a mountain face. But that might mean that something like a mouse with a smaller home range of 10 meters or so would they not be exposed to it. So who made it the second time you would capture those that hadn’t been exposed for whatever reason the first time. But even knowing that so that those kinds of aerial baiting programs are really successful with rats, like I said, mice there were there was some concern that that wouldn’t be successful for mice.
Melissa Houghton
But rabbits were sort of the unknown and rabbits can be a certain percentage of them neophobic or they’re not, or for whatever reason, they won’t take the bait. And it was thought that with 150,000 rabbits on the island that may be you, you might have a few 1000 that were left over after the bait and that was the reason that following the baiting that that hunting teams would have to go in and mop that up as fast as possible before they started breeding as rabbits do.
Melissa Houghton
So, when the eradication kicked off the baiting started. But in order to bake successfully, they had to have clear conditions. And Macquarie is not known for clear conditions. So the weather was so bad actually, in the first instance that they had to pull the they had to pull the project that year and go back and reassess. And not only did very little baiting actually occur, but they actually had a lot of non target kills, despite the fact that it was winter. So that meant that in the following year, when coordinate everybody go back down, actually employing a team and mitigation team to go around the island constantly going around the island, burying carcasses wherever they could find them to reduce the non target kills.
Melissa Houghton
And also what happened in that, in that year, after the first failure was somebody decided, that’s the type of NGO releasing Khaleesi virus and see what it does. And the effects of that were dramatic, they actually killed, they think possibly up to 90% of the rabbits that were there. And that meant that there was all these campuses around and of rabbits that were not poisonous to non target species. And by the time the baiting occurred, they had a lot less rabbits to deal with today. And that meant also that the field team arrived, there was a lot less rabbits on the havens than originally I thought we’d be left over.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I was reading in the paper that, you know, they were worried that you said there was, you know, potentially up to 150,000 rabbits. So even if point 1% survived, you’re still looking at potentially 1000s of rabbits. And that’s just wild to think about. And, you know, just as soon as spring comes around, then that those games can just rebound so fast. So when you know about, you know, we talked a little bit about how challenging the training was for these dogs. And I assume for the handlers as well for you. So tell us a little bit about kind of the preparation that you and the dog both received for this particular program.
So when when we first were employed as dog handlers, and we had one of the dog trainers, particularly, he’s very well known in Australia, and he trains dogs for all different programs and around the world is called Steve Austin. And we went through his dog training program, essentially, which is, yeah, so we all gathered here for about a month, I think it was a training. And we essentially learned how he trains dogs and in his methods. And then we also had to do other training and make sure we knew because we had to carry a lot of equipment to use for rabbits, as well as the dogs who had to learn how to train the dogs, how to keep their motivation up. So we had a lot of tools for that.
Melissa Houghton
So we had to we we actually collect a lot of rabbits in Tasmania, so we had pelts and we had rabbit pea that we used up sticks down the island, because even if we didn’t see a rabbit for a long time, we had to make sure the dogs were, you know, motivated. And on point if we did find something. Yeah, so essentially, it was going through his training program.
Kayla Fratt
Do you remember kind of how long that took or anything that you you were really anything that it really focused on in particular that you care to share?
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, so I believe it was a couple of weeks of, of training with him. But he just is amazing. He had all the dogs that were there were just fixated on where he was all the time. But perhaps you’re accustomed to these kind of methods, but he was really good at his you know, we only trained with the dogs for short periods of time, we always stopped the training when they’re on the high and these kind of things and and we had to also take them out and and make sure that they were responsive to us. So we work together as a group. But then we also had to what was more about training us than the dogs, obviously, the dogs knew what they were doing, but it was about training us to be very clear in it. And we had for every every dog action that we wonder we had three. So we had, sorry, we had hand signals, we had a whistle, and we had our voice or a command because the conditions down there, you it was really really windy. So you might not they might not be able to hear you, for example. And so we for every command there was there was multiple ways of making that command. So we had a we had a very high pitch whistle, and we had the hand commands and we had our actual voice. So yeah, it’s Yeah, I can’t think of anything else.
Kayla Fratt
Okay, no, and I was just I was just looking through his website a little bit as you were talking and he like, I mean, no guy for this. How cool and what an honor to get Learn from under him.
Yeah, he’s a massive character Steve Austin, he he’s just so incredible with his dogs and he cried to leave them there because he he came with us. I was in the first team. So we went down on the boat and we left them on the island and, and he loves all these dogs. He must train so many dogs and in all sorts of things, but he loves them and they love him. And he’s just never raised his voice and always have their attention is just amazing. Yeah, is is a big character.
Melissa Houghton
But there was two other dog trainers as well that trained. One, one Phillip, Steve Austin train the Springer’s, and then another fellow train the Labradors. And then one of the Labradors was trained by another, another fellow in New Zealand, but they all ended up under Steve Austin’s wing for the final leg. So yeah, it’s actually the other dog trainer came to the island at the beginning as well, actually, his name was Gus nofas. And it’s Dutch shs, I believe it’s something like that. And he was very different, really wanted to stay on at the limelight and had a really calm, beautiful way with his dogs. And he trained the Labradors again, to they had to pass the same test, but he had relatively similar means, but just a very different way about him. But he has a similar relationship with his dogs as well.
Kayla Fratt
Gotcha. Yeah. So and we’ve hinted at this a little bit, but you know, some of these the dangers and the challenges of working on the sub Arctic, I have not been anywhere near that far south before I have been up to the Arctic Ocean on the other end of the globe, and can imagine some of the challenges. But yeah, tell me tell me about kind of what it was actually like working on these conditions. And what some of the things that you had to keep in mind for kind of risk assessment and safety were like,
Yeah, well, it was just, it’s it’s one of the windiest places you can possibly go to, and it’s, it’s got a perpetual fog, it’s very often foggy down there, although the conditions are changing, like elsewhere in the world. But with the dogs, I mean, they they lived out in, in 40 gallon drums with their candles, and we all lived in water tank huts out in the field. So we go out in the field for 28 days at a time, and we’d be paired up with one Hunter, which we rotate every two weeks. So we always had a different person to work with, or different styles and methods and things. And then we go back to station for three days a month and download all our GPS tracks and see where we’ve gone.
Melissa Houghton
But the conditions down there. So we’re living in these field huts, and especially the Springer Spaniels, it’s always really wet there. So actually, it’s more dangerous in the Antarctic. In the East Antarctic, where Australia spends a lot of its time. It’s very dry. It’s Macquarie Island is very wet and windy, so it’s not as cold but it’s actually a lot more dangerous. Because of that wind, you get this wind chill factor and more people have died in Macquarie Island in the Australian Antarctic, for that reason. So with the poor dogs, like the Springer Spaniels, they would just get wet and freeze so they get ice baubles all over them, which which never actually came out if the conditions were right until you got some sunny days. The Labradors are just for it just they were just made for the environment. But one of the biggest things was, I mean, they had GPS collars on them. So we had a GPS tracker for ourselves. And then you could see where your dogs were, but you actually often couldn’t actually see so you’d be walking and following your track or wherever you want to go. But just using your GPS because it was so foggy, I remember more than once putting my GPS in my pocket and walking and then looking ahead and wondering what is that realizing I’ve just done a circle and come back because it’s just so I think sometimes you just could not you couldn’t see where you’re going.
Melissa Houghton
So yeah, we lived in there are water tanks that were modified into hats and with you’d stay there with one other person so you had an oven next to your head at the bunk. And you’d have your food and your bunk and you have a cold porch area and then the dog says stayed in these 40 gallon drums out in the out in the elements basically. But more than once the dogs would come into danger because the island itself as I mentioned before, it’s got these steep coastal cliffs and then a plateau at the top. And it’s a it’s actually a World Heritage Area for more than its wildlife. It’s a World Heritage Area also for its geology because it’s got this unique it’s a part of the oceans mantle that’s been pushed up above the sea surface level. And it’s it’s really crumbly, strange rock, so you could stand on a piece of rock and it would just disintegrate underneath you and this happened. I had a few near death experiences but so did the dogs and one of the fellows dogs he he went over straight over a cliff and fell. He says it was 70 meters And then fell hit the ground and there was a sort of crater where he landed and this fellow said I just like, he went down there with his gun. We had to carry a lot of equipment had all this equipment, he went down there with his gun thinking he’s just gonna have to put him down and he was this huge, big lab who actually apparently just got up and shrugged it all off. It was fine.
Melissa Houghton
But um, I had a bad experience with my yeah, there’s just there’s so many just anything. It’s a very rough and rugged place and anything could happen. My dog wags he fell down a sort of hole in this vegetated slope and the hole fell into a gully that sort of slipped into a river and slipped down and he ended up in this pool above a waterfall, which was about a 20 meter drop to the coast. And we couldn’t get him out and I called other hunters around to try and help and we threw ropes to him. He was trying to get out he was so smart with with throwing a rope down there with a ball on the end, he was trying to hold on to it, we try and pull him up this waterfall but you know, we just couldn’t get him out. And the same thing with our weakest night was falling thought we’re just going to have to, we might have to actually, he might not survive. This is pretty cold down there. And in the end, one of the hunters managed by accident to Looper a rope around his bottom jaw and report him up that way and survive, then close the labs.
Melissa Houghton
The labs are so tough, he just sort of shook his head and brushed it off and kept going. But I was just beside myself because I was so genuinely love this dog by then he was my best company down there. But yeah, it was it was some really hard times for the dogs and people down there. That’s what makes it so special to you know, my Springer Spaniel. He was the first dog to go home, he went home. He had turned out he had really poor knees. So he was the first dog to go home and became the poster child of the project. It’s still goes around Hobart, Tasmania being the Macquarie Island, poster child, poster boy, very nice dog. But lots of dogs by the end of the program. So I was in the first year, the field team, by the end. There was seven dogs left. So a lot of dogs ended up going home early with with problems. It’s just really tough on them.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah. No, I can imagine. I mean, I’ve even just comparing to like wind farms, which as far as conservation dog work is one of the well, I mean, obviously, it depends on where your wind farm is. It can be really challenging terrain, but the wind farm work I’ve done because, you know, it’s in the plains of Nebraska, it’s relatively safe. And I’m still I can imagine if we were doing that year round, day in day out, or you know, for months and months at a time, like, you’re gonna have injuries, you’re gonna have stuff go on for you. Yeah, I mean, you know, generally, hopefully, it’s gonna be, you know, stuff like torn toenails and, you know, paw pads and stuff. But even those things over time can be really problematic. And you know, it just takes a slip for, for a knee injury or something. It doesn’t have to be anything as dramatic as as falling 17 meters.
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, well, yes, it was just a, there’s so many things that could go wrong. And there was no visit on the island. So the doctor, there’s always a doctor at the station, but sort of who was not a dog lover in the year I was there. She just became the person who had to check up on all these dog issues every time and no vet came into to look at them that resupplies and things. But yeah, it was really, really tough on the animals. They. We worked six days a week. And we work night and day. So it did spotlighting and things as well. So it was they did a lot of miles. And even though our miles were logged, we didn’t actually log officially the dog miles, but they would do easily 10s of times as kilometers as many kilometers as we did on the island. Yeah, no, of course, we couldn’t have done the project without them. Honestly.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, no. Yeah, that’s had so so intensive. And so the dogs, were the dogs only working on rabbits, or were they also searching for the rats and mice?
Yeah, so sorry, the dogs that were part of that field team were on the rabbits. And then yeah, in the final year, basically after that, that Beijing and the Khaleesi was so successful. The second time round, when we actually arrived that time around, they said, Look, we think there might be 30 rabbits on the island, and that was a big difference to the 1000s that they thought might be there. And it just seems just such a huge task but again, so organize. So the island was hunted was divided into six hunting blocks and the dog handler and a hunter would take each hunting block for a two week period and then rotate around. And then at the end of the project in so it ended up taking instead of the sort of three or four years of field teams being on the island I thought it ended up taking. So I went there in 2011, it was declared successful April 2014. And in that final year, they brought down some rodent detection dogs with their handlers.
Melissa Houghton
They were a lot of them were Kiwis in part of this program, because the Kiwis, the New Zealand is sorry, they have great. They use protection dogs a lot. And they have a program there where you can train your own dogs and use them for detection work. So they had some rodent detection, detection dog handlers and their dogs flying specifically just for that year to go and check up for rodents and mice and go over the island. So in when we first arrived, I thought you have 30 Rabbits mainly and I arrived that second time, I think it was July 2011. And then by November of that year, four months later, we caught 13 rabbits and we didn’t know it then but they were the last rabbits found on the island. And the last rabbit found on the on the last adult was by my dog wags. And then her babies she had four babies, they were found shortly afterwards by another dog handler called Sandy King from Stewart Island. And they were the last one. So there was only 13 that we got in that year. And hats off to the teams that came after that. Because the teams that came after that they had to keep searching and searching and searching, not knowing whether there was any left there.
Melissa Houghton
But they often even in the time I was there. It’s very grueling work to be looking for something and only do your job well if you’ve been looking and not found anything. But to be constantly looking at nighttime, the day that works found that rubbers, I’d said to the person in my heart joking there. So I don’t even know what a rabbit looks like anymore because you’ve constantly looking, but not finding anything, which can be very demoralizing. You have to be very strong in the mind to do that eradication work, because it’s down to the very last one.
Kayla Fratt
No, I mean, the I especially starting out on any new project, I am always so anxious until my dogs make their first find and to have so few finds in such a large search area. So how did you cope with that? Do you carry gimmies? For the dogs? How did you kind of help keep their motivation up as well when you know they’re spending? I would imagine that means weeks, if not months at a time without finding anything.
Oh, that’s right. So we had collected pelts and pee from mainland Tasmania, and they were stored in freezers on station and we’d seal them up but take them with us. And then you might in the morning go out and and make a field of scent or something for the dogs or make them find something to you either trail up or you’d set up a pellet somewhere. And then you’d use the commands to get them to that spot or whoever you wanted to play it, but just to keep them motivated and interested in in something.
Melissa Houghton
To be honest, though. I think some of the dogs went home because they were clearly not motivated anymore. It was just so so difficult. And particularly like the terrier theory is very intelligent and the terrier very quickly. We could tell he said there’s no rabbits here and basically stopped working. He’s been retrained in rodents and works in Tasmania. But the dogs did struggle with motivation as well. Despite even using all these games, they enjoyed the games, but I think a lot of them knew there was no more rabbits. But that was important because when there was actually a rabbit to be found in a needle in the haystack, the behavior change was immediate that you could tell that they’re onto something so when Wags found that rabbit and what was interesting about that the hardest thing about the looking for rabbits and then seeing their behavior was that they’d often be be bearing birds in these old places riddled with rabbit words and poles but dominantly birds in there and you were never sure if the dog was looking at a bird and whether you should discourage that or not. But actually in the end Wags when he found this rabbit was in the burrow with a bird. Anyway, so it was yeah, it was very, very challenging to keep them motivated and you know, at some of them at some point might have looked at the bar and bowed with interest because there was nothing else to look at for them. You know
Yeah, of course. Now that sounds extraordinarily challenging. And yeah, I can imagine that you would have some dogs to kind of lose interest in.
Kayla Fratt
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Kayla Fratt
You know, that makes sense then as well kind of circling back to this dog choice discussion of, you know, really looking at dogs that are very much so bred to be feeling dogs. They’re very much so bred to go out there and cover this terrain and look for stuff. Versus I generally I handle Border Collies and they don’t tend to kind of enjoy the search for the searches sake the same way that labs and Spaniels often do. And I can see, I don’t think my dogs would be a good fit for this sort of project. That sounds like the sort of thing that is a better fit for a dog that kind of naturally has much more of that fielding ability that makes a ton of sense. And, you know, as you said, the terrier with maybe a little bit more intelligence, not that, you know, I mean, labs, kind of generally trainable, but there is no, in my experience are a little bit happier to just kind of keep throwing themselves at a task forever and ever. Yeah. Whether or not they’re having success.
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, very persistent. But no, yeah, that’s right. And it was great to have those unique attributes in those breeds for the different tasks on the island. Though, springers definitely wear themselves out much faster than the Labradors who are more methodical. But yeah, the amount of ground the Springer’s can cover is just amazing. And one of them particularly, Katie, she found two of those 13. Yeah, just just really, they just can cover a lot of ground. And if you’re, they’re very active. So you have to be constantly watching to see what this behavior changes, whereas a Labrador who Mozes along, when there’s a behavior change, it’s very obvious for the spring. They’re already so quick moving around that you have to be really onto it. But yeah, though, there are excellent. That’s what Steve Austin mainly uses for all his dogs is Springer. spaniels. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, there’s such amazing little search dogs. Yeah, that makes that makes a ton of sense. Did anyone have any trouble with kind of what the Springer’s with in particular with kind of interested in birds? You know, I know, I’ve heard that from some people struggling a little bit more with kind of bird interest from our spaniels? Or was that something that didn’t end up being as much of a concern?
Melissa Houghton
A couple of them. Were at the outset. And then also, you know, in time, just because there might be a burning a bar, and then there was something to be interested in. So there was a bit of that. And it was just a matter of deterrence when they that occurred. But it was hard because you knew they always had to be looking to be honest, you can see a behavior change if there wasn’t a rabbit around so they’re onto a bird. At the beginning. We weren’t ever sure exactly what was going on down those barriers. But yeah, it did require some focus from some of the dog handlers on keeping those they just went they just went hard on the training with the piece sticks in the pellets again to try and refocus those dogs. The spring is actually quite single minded, though. They are single minded dogs to the point where like we were talking about safety before with somebody who said the thing about a spring of it smelled, smelled a rabbit will just throw itself off a cliff or anything that had no self preservation for the for the tasks and it was at hand. They’ll pretty good.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. Well, is there anything else that you wanted to share before we wrap up here?
I’ve just been feel really fortunate to have gone down to the island parts eradication then also have gone down. Many times since eradications. been completed. I went down as a research assistant and now work on invertebrates looking at their recovery. On the island as a sort of indicator of its overall ecosystem trajectory change, improving the entire ecosystems health. And so we’ve been going down multiple years. And now I can see, I remember Keith Springer who wrote the paper, you’re talking about the beginning, he said, when we first arrived, we were just amazed by the place and he’s and he said, Oh, you know, it’s nothing but a pretty paddock now. And we couldn’t, we couldn’t understand what he was talking about, because he’d seen what it used to look like. And now I know, and just being part of this success story, it’s so incredible. You’ve got vegetation, above your head, and the bird laughs all coming back. And, and it’s returning now to this even more incredibly beautiful place that it once was before humans got there. It’s pretty awesome to be part of that. Yeah.
How incredible and yeah, just how special to have that kind of before during an after oven eradication project, because, you know, these invasive species are so impactful. And it’s so as you said, it’s so easy to look at a place and think it’s beautiful, and not even realize the impact that invasive species are having on this some of the natural beauty and biodiversity and everything. It’s yeah, how special that’s that’s really, really cool that you got to do that. And yeah, I mean, really hats off to the entire team. I wish that I could go shake everyone’s hand. You know how, yeah, how much work? That was? Yeah, it’s just it’s really incredible. And what field conditions? Oh, my God. I see. I see now why you only did it. You know, they only had handlers during the year at a time. That sounds extraordinary. Yeah. Challenging.
Melissa Houghton
Yeah, it was really, it really was. It was great. Yeah, I feel very fortunate. And yeah, and now they’re doing more projects and other sub Antarctic islands based on their success there. So that’s really good.
Kayla Fratt
That’s so good to hear. And, you know, I really hope that’s something that I think the US, I mean, part of the part of it is I think eradication projects are a little bit easier to work on, not easier, but to have these really discrete areas that you’re trying to work on to actually prevent that from colonization later on. But we I don’t see as many eradication efforts taking place in the US as they do kind of Down, Down Under where you all are. And maybe I’m just not tapped into the right areas. But it’s something that I hope to continue to see more of. And that’s not just because dogs often are part of those projects. But obviously that’s that’s a benefit in my book.
Melissa Houghton
Yeah. I think there’s quite a few off the coast of California and down the Mexican islands as well.
Right. Yeah. The crazy the yellow crazy on projects and a couple others down there have taken place. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right, Melissa, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming and sharing the story. I learned so much, and I’m sure our listeners did as well. And to our listeners at home, I hope that you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and your skill set. You can find shownotes, donate to K9Conservationists, join our Patreon or sign up for our course all over at k9conservationists.org. We’ll be back in your earbuds next week to tell more stories about conservation detection dogs and continue learning about this incredible field. Thanks and good night.