Welcome To Multi-National K9

Multi National K9 has a strong commitment for the research and development of trained operational Environmental Protection sniffer dogs.

 

Previous dogs trained by Gary  have been a massive success including the world’s first Red Ear Slider Turtle and egg detection dog. Angus has been working for Bio Security Qld and has located several nests of eggs from the imported pests and ignoring the 100’s of native turtle eggs. Angus has made a great contribution for environmental protection by stopping dozens of future breeding of these pests and tipping the balance of Australia’s fragile native turtle population.

 Another big success was the training of the world’s first cane toad detection dog for W.A. Nifty has been used to locate hitch hiking Cane toads on the W.A. boarder and recently has been used in N.S.W. and on the beautiful Moreton Island. A second Cane toad detection dog called Ozzie is working on Groote Eylandt and a third Cattle Dog called Rusty is presently in training for Groote Eylandt.

 We are so proud to be able to make a difference helping to protect this magnificent country of ours by the use of sniffer dogs to locate pests or endangered species.

 

 What about the animals

 Written by Amanda Harris

 My dream is to see sniffer dogs as a key role in natural resource management programs for the future, and to have this cutting edge conservation method used further in the protection of Australian native fauna.

 Worldwide concern about the status of wildlife populations, coupled with the difficulties inherent to tracking and locating such populations, has instigated the development and increasing growth of non-invasive methods for wildlife monitoring and research.  The use of sniffer dogs to track endangered species is proactively incorporated into natural resource management activities in non-protected and protected areas, in a number of countries around the world: North America, South America, Africa, Asia and India. 

 What about Australia?  In Australia research has started and been successful with pest animal management, with sniffer dogs assisting scientists and land protection officers to locate fire ants, crazy ants, red-eared slider turtles and the cane toad.  The efficient detection of these species is crucial, to pest animal eradication programs and the protection of native fauna. 

 My dream is about to become a reality:

Three groups have joined to trial a twelve (12) month pilot sniffer dog research project, at Saddler Springs, a property between Mt Moffatt and Carnarvon Gorge National Parks.  Two Border Collie working dog pups have been sourced, with the aim to train them to track the Northern Quoll in the Carnarvon Ranges.  The three groups are: What about the animals (Amanda Harris and Ann Biasol), Saddler Springs Education Centre (Lloyd Hancock and Paul Cuskelly) and Multi National K9 (Gary Jackson).

 The Northern Quoll Dasyurus hallucatus, (status in Queensland: Least Concern under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and National: Endangered under the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999), has had population decline linked with the impact from Cane Toads in Carnarvon National Park, southwest Queensland and Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory.  During fauna surveys completed within Carnarvon National Park, Ecologists and Queensland Parks and Wildlife (QPWS) Resource Rangers, have highlighted the difficulty through trapping effort alone, to identify Quoll presence without first finding evidence of Quoll scats, and then the almost impossible task of identifying these scats, across a vast and broken landscape such as the Carnarvon’s. 

 I believe the use of sniffer dogs will assist scientists and resource managers to locate scats and therefore the target species presence, by pinpointing key areas in rugged and difficult to traverse landscapes. The ability of dogs to cover large survey areas and use their high olfactory senses, to quickly locate scats that may be missed by the human eye, will be highly beneficial. 

 Part of this trial will be to demonstrate the use of sniffer dogs in wildlife survey methodology, to allow the costly and labour intensive methodology of trapping and camera survey to be more targeted and efficient.  Results of this study could assist scientists to document populations, and develop improved recovery plans, for species such as the Northern Quoll.

 Currently this pilot project is in the development stage, while the puppies and I begin an extensive training and development program with Multi National K9, and we continue generating further support and advisory from Zoos, Wildlife Sanctuaries, QPWS, Universities, Quoll Researchers and Conservation groups. 

 The continuation of this dream will hopefully be to develop trained dogs for the detection of a number of species, and the possibilities are endless.  Some of these being, but not limited to: bandicoots, yakka skink, kowari, rare snails, the detection of rare plants and even noxious weeds.

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