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HOLY SMOKES y’all! A group of ~10 conservation detection dog pros have been quietly laboring for TWO YEARS to make the Conservation Dog Alliance a reality. In this episode, hear from several of the founding members about what the Conservation Dog Alliance will offer. To join the Conservation Dog Alliance, check out conservationdogalliance.org. There will be an informational webinar on July 19 2024, and a recording will be available for eternity on YouTube.
Conservation Dog Alliance member benefits:
1) Meetups and Networking
Conservation Dog Alliance members get access to an inclusive and friendly online community of like-minded folks with whom to share experiences and ask questions about dog training, vetting clients, running a business, and more.
2) Knowledge Base
Members gain access to free customizable templates and other resources to assist in professionalizing their organizations and pursuing their goals.
3) Continuing Education
Members will have access to educational opportunities such as “Lunch and Learn” Zooms, webinars on a variety of topics, and one-on-one mentorships with experienced professionals.
Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt 00:23
Hey everyone, Kayla here from K9Conservationists. And I am super excited because this week we are announcing the launch of the Conservation Dog Alliance. This week’s episode is gonna be a little short, a little funky, it’s going to be me and a couple of the other founding members of the Conservation Alliance sharing why we’re so excited about this organization and what it’s going to offer. And if you’re really interested, you should definitely go over to the Conservation Alliance website conservationdogalliance.org and learn more about the offerings we have. You’re going to hear about things like our resource library, our lunch and learns skill sharing, networking, and all sorts of amazing things which are going to be available to members for $25. So I really hope you can join us over there. It this is kind of a separate thing from K9Conservationists. But I know that y’all are gonna really love what we’re building and offering over there. So without further ado, please enjoy the founding members of the Conservation Alliance sharing their thoughts and dreams and hopes for this amazing organization.
Arden Blumenthal 01:21
Hi, I’m Arden Blumentahl, my pronouns are she/her, and I am the New York New Jersey Trail Conference Conservation Dogs Program Coordinator. I have a master’s degree in Biology from Purdue, and I’ve been working as a conservation detection dog handler since 2020.
Arden Blumenthal 01:39
The trail conference was originally founded to help build and maintain trails outside of New York City, but since it was founded over 100 years ago, it’s taken on more conservation and stewardship roles, including habitat protection and management initiatives, education and outreach about responsible use, and inspiring community action to protect our region’s trails and natural areas. So my program has a primary commitment to the lower Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey in the US. We assist our regional partners including other nonprofits, research institutions, state agencies, etc. survey for emerging invasive species, and native rare threatened and endangered species. Our targets have included plants, insects, fungi, scat and live animals. Sometimes the work we do has immediate impacts like the removal of invasive plant, and sometimes the data our dogs help us collect impact future habitat management decisions.
Arden Blumenthal 02:42
I started as a volunteer when the program was founded in 2019, shadowing another handler and learning the ropes from his dog, but have since become the program coordinator and work with two dogs of my own that I’ve raised since puppies, Pete and Letty. And they’re both black labs. When I first started out, I was lucky enough to have mentorship. But as I progressed, I realized there’s a lot of isolation that can occur when you work in a small field with little access to support from other professionals. So I’m so excited to be involved in a potential solution to this problem. I’m stoked to be a founding member of the Conservation Dog Alliance, because it’s going to be an incredible hub of resources, relationship building, information sharing, and more. I think the Conservation Dog Alliance is exactly what this field needs in order to advance skill sets, increased transparent transparency and improve inclusiveness. There are more and more people interested in the conservation detection dog methodology, and I want those dedicated folks to have the support they need to do the job.
Arden Blumenthal 03:47
Well, I’m honored to be a part of such an impressive group of individuals that cared deeply about the methodology and also equally for the people who are participating in the field. Community building can be daunting, because there’s, you know, a level of vulnerability that you have to have to put yourself out there to raise your hand. You know, I’m proud of the hard work dedication and openness all founding members have showed, especially while assembling the resource library. I hope the community embraces this opportunity and the spirit of collaboration can continue on. I am really, really, really looking forward to learning from all the new members.
Meg Barnes 04:30
Hi, my name is Meg, I’m the founding director and CEO of Detection for Good, my pronouns are she or her. I’m a certified professional dog trainer, detection dog handler and a PhD ecologist and research scientist. My research focuses primarily on applied management of threatened species and ecosystems. Now at DFJ, that’s Detection for Good for short, I have the privilege of working alongside my three amazing canine teammates. That’s Dallas, who’s five, Eve, who’s three, and Merlin, who’s two. They are all working line Labradors. We are based in Perth in Western Australia down under. We work across Australia, primarily in Western Australia and Queensland. And we specialize in threatened species projects taking advantage of my research experience over the last 15 years.
Meg Barnes 05:20
We’re currently at home base gearing up for a cool new project working on threatened plants, which I hope to be able to talk more about soon. And we’re also continuing to train for our next season of work on the Condamine Earless Dragon, a beautiful and mysterious, endangered lizard that lives only on a single incredibly transformed floodplain.
Meg Barnes 05:40
I am so so incredibly excited to be one of the founding members of the Conservation Dog Alliance, woohoo! Working on threatened species often needs creative problem solving. And it can mean limited resources. One of the core missions of the network is to facilitate partnerships and connections with others working on similar projects, and to make the genuine and open sharing of knowledge and, and helpful resources with one another easy. So from training plans to safety strategies, all of that stuff is here in are going to be here in the Conservation Dog Alliance really, really soon when it launches. And I’m so so excited about that. Because when we work together and share knowledge, then we make progress faster. And conservation is a crisis discipline. So it really needs it.
Meg Barnes 06:27
I have been super, super lucky to have some incredible mentors, you know, as I got into the industry, and learned about the detection world, but finding the right people to connect with wasn’t always easy. And I know that I was super, super lucky. So I personally have learned so much from so many of the other founding members who are just phenomenal, as well as many of my other incredible peers and mentors. And that connection, that mentoring that knowledge sharing has been invaluable. I am so super excited to be a part of making that easier for others through the CDA and for making, finding a way to do that easier through the CDA. And just how incredible this resource will be for both new and experienced handlers around the world. I am super excited to be a part of making that easier for anyone getting into the industry or who is super experienced, that might be starting working on a new project, or even who’s super experienced but just wants to stay up to date with like their continuing professional development, different safety standards, new methods, all that kind of stuff, because the CDA is going to have all kinds of super fun stuff.
Meg Barnes 07:42
Inside it personally, I’m really excited about the huge number of resources on the practice and management of detection as a business safety skills, training plans, as well as the webinars, which will be about kind of novel applications. And really interesting new projects. So hopefully, they’ll help people come up with different approaches, and all that kind of stuff. So it’s gonna be really fantastic. I wish that these incredible resources had been all in one place when I got started. I think that CDA has a huge amount of power to empower more of us to meet new conservation challenges.
Meg Barnes 08:27
The other thing that I’m really super excited about is the targeted discussion groups, which will make finding people thinking about similar problems just so much easier. And the power to connect with people internationally. For me, when I was able to connect with people, internationally and ask others working on similar problems, about how they approached it to get my own ideas, and so that I wasn’t reinventing the wheel to get an idea of pros cons of different approaches, that really helped me kickstart novel projects for detection for good helped me inform our partners. And it also helps speed up the process of getting dogs operational on odors that were new to me or potentially novel in general. Which also reduce the cost which is really important for conservation. So I just wanted to say how excited I am and I really look forward to seeing you all inside the Conservation Dog Alliance soon.
09:33
I am Lindsay Ware, my pronouns are she/her. I’m the founder of Science Dogs in New England and I’m a conservation dog trainer and handler. My educational and work background is all in wildlife biology and professional dog training, and I’ve been training dogs for conservation purposes since about 2011. I work with four dogs currently: Aldo and Juniper are wirehaired dachshunds that specialize in conservation related tracking, Chili Bean and Delta specialize in conservation scent detection. Chili’s a Labrador retriever, and Delta is an Australian Shepherd. Lately, I’ve been working in Maine, but I do travel throughout the Northeast United States.
Lindsay Ware 10:17
I’m really excited and very proud to be part of founding the Conservation Dog Alliance, because I’m a really big believer in the power of collaboration when it comes to this field. I believe that collaborating with and supporting each other are major factors in helping the field continue to grow and succeed. And honestly, it just makes everything so much easier and enjoyable. When you’re in such a specialized field to be able to more easily connect with and learn from other practitioners. I personally have at times felt quite disconnected, just because many of us in this field are spread out geographically. But being a part of the CDA has already alleviated that so much, and we’re just getting started. I think that the conservation dog alliance will be helpful for the field of conservation detection, because it provides a reliable and centralized place to go for networking and resources.
Lindsay Ware 11:17
I’m especially excited about the continuing educational offerings like lunch and learns and webinars, it will make it a lot easier to find educational events and especially easier to find educational events that are specific to conservation related issues, instead of what a lot of us have had to do in the past, where we would take some of the great content out there, put out by people in other fields of scent detection, and just kind of do our best to apply it to conservation issues. Now we’ll have a more centralized source of conservation detection resources.
Kayla Fratt 11:55
My name is Kayla, and I’m one of the cofounders of K9Conservationists. Y’all already know me, my pronouns are she/her and I’m a certified dog behavior consultant pursuing my PhD at Oregon State University. I work alongside Barley and Niffler, who are both Border Collies, and we work mostly across the Americas, primarily currently on a carnivore scat detection project. I’m currently at Alaska working on a coastal wolf detection project and hope to be in El Salvador searching for felid scat soon. Currently, fundraising and working in grant writing for that project. I am super duper excited about the Conservation Dog Alliance because I am so passionate about the work that we do here, and helping others learn about this amazing line of work.
Kayla Fratt 12:33
I genuinely believe in the power of mentorship and education to help people and dogs work towards conservation and research goals. The Conservation Dog Alliance is going to be such a warm and welcoming community to help folks from around the globe come together for knowledge, co creation and skill sharing. And I really wish it existed eight years ago, when I was first trying to get into this line of work. Like a lot of other conservation dog pros, I received tons of messages on social media and emails from folks who want to learn how to be helpful in ecology outside with their dogs. And it’s going to be amazing to have such an inclusive educational group to point them towards. I’m especially excited personally about networking with other members and learning from the wealth of knowledge out there. And I have already found our resource library where you can pull standard operating procedures and safety protocols. So so, so helpful for making our teams the best they can be. So yeah, I’m so excited about this.
Lauralea Oliver 13:28
Hi, I’m Lauralea Oliver, she/her, of K9inScentive, LLC. We’re based in California, and we’re primarily throughout the state. And we do have some projects in Arizona. I’ve been in this industry for over a decade. And in the time that I’ve been involved in conservation dog detection work, I have seen exponential growth in this field, which is great. I mean, seeing dogs being deployed for all sorts of really interesting projects to help support conservation efforts, support biological studies, it’s really exciting to see that the use of detection dogs is becoming more widely accepted, understood and scientifically supported.
Lauralea Oliver 14:10
I’m most excited about being involved as a co-founder with the Conservation Dog Alliance because of the fact that I’ve seen this industry growing so quickly and so robustly that I think there’s a need for everyone in the industry to communicate, to share knowledge to support each other in a constructive manner. And I think the CDA is really going to offer that a place where colleagues can get together and share lessons learned, perhaps mistakes, things they would do differently. Because, you know, why re-make the wheel if someone else has gone before you? We can advance the science advanced the learning if we’re all sharing knowledge with each other. And I think it’s important that when clients are looking to hire, you know, conservation dog team, that they have an understanding of the questions to ask, what the expectation should be, the advantage to using dogs, maybe some of the challenges that might come along with that. And I think it’s important that clients are empowered with the information, what’s been done, what can be done, what’s more challenging, and perhaps the things that they can ask, when looking to hire a conservation detection dog team. I know for me personally, when I’m contacted, whether it’s a student working on their PhD, or a large company looking for conservation consulting work, or a field biologists looking for a new method to assist them with their regular surveys, or counts. A lot of people are very excited and eager about the idea of using dogs, there’s a lot of mystique about it. And it’s definitely exciting. Certainly, for those of us working in the industry, we’re very passionate about it. But I also think that there’s a lack of understanding of how dogs are trained, what’s required to properly prepare a working detection dog, you know, the time it takes the resources needed. And I find I do a lot of education with new clients, especially when they’re first getting involved with using dogs.
Lauralea Oliver 16:17
And I think the CDA is going to be a great way to offer some of that information so that people that are thinking about using dogs, which is great, can go to that resource, and sort of prep themselves, you know, get some information before they start reaching out to possible suppliers or consultants, they have some idea of what is involved. And then if they’re doing a project design or study design, I think it’ll help them understand how to integrate the dogs into that design, kind of ahead of time. And I think that that’s a really powerful thing, because I love how eager clients are when they contact.
Lauralea Oliver 16:58
I know me personally, and I know my colleagues, they love the idea of using the dogs but there’s a lot of misunderstanding about how it works, again, how the dogs are trained, prepared and deployed. And I think it would be I think it’s very valuable for the CDA to offer that and that’s probably the thing I’m most excited about because client education is so critical. And I don’t know that there’s a lot of it currently available. So I’m really excited that that’s going to be something that we’re going to offer through the CDA.
Lauren Wendt 17:30
My name is Lauren Wendt and I’m owner of MomentumK9, my preferred pronouns are she and her. I’ve been involved with conservation dogs since 2016. I have a degree in wildlife management and I spent a love and exciting years as a wildlife police officer, three of those as a canine handler with a dog trained to find some of the world’s most trafficked wildlife products. Since then, I’ve been a conservation dog handler and trainer working across the United States on a myriad of projects. And since 2019, I’ve also been working with natural resource law enforcement programs across the United States and in Africa. In 2020, I co-founded the Conservation Canine Officers Association, which promotes the professional development in support of canine teams among conservation law enforcement agencies. I’ve also been a disaster search and rescue canine handler. I currently have two Labradors, Benny and Finn, that are my conservation dogs, and Goose, who is a golden retriever/Dutch Shepherd mix, and she is my just fun, do everything with dog. And I also have a five month old labrador puppy that I’m raising for working placement.
Lauren Wendt 18:41
I am incredibly excited for the Donservation Dog Alliance. This will be a super valuable resource for the field of conservation detection dogs, and welcomes anyone who’s interested and is looking for support education, guidance or professional community to belong to. The Conservation Dog Alliance understands that the current and future uses of conservation dogs span a wide variety of project types and needs, which means staying curious, open minded and asking a lot of questions is critical to continuing to innovate, improve the quality of work and to ensure the use of conservation dogs remains incredible method for solving some of the world’s most critical and unique conservation challenges.
Lauren Wendt 19:23
The Conservation Dog alliance will be a central hub that’s able to provide resources and educational opportunities to all parts of the chain regarding the use of conservation detection dogs. So whether you’re someone who is interested in learning about being a dog handler, you’re a biologist or researcher interested in how conservation dog could potentially help your project, or anyone interested in what these amazing dogs and their handlers do. The Conservation dog alliance will be an incredibly valuable resource. I’m very honored and lucky to be part of the beginning stages of the conservation dog alliance with amazing group of four folks who are passionate, inclusive and respectful. I look forward to continuing to give back to the field that means so much to me, and I hope you’ll join us.