Meet the Team Behind: Working Dogs for Conservation

Working Dogs for Conservation trains detection dogs to protect wildlife and ecosystems—using their incredible sense of smell to track endangered species, stop poaching, and support conservation efforts worldwide. Learn more here! 

What does your work entail? 

We protect wildlife and wild places by training rescue dogs into expert conservation canines and deploy them worldwide to make a difference. Our work spans ecological monitoring, biosecurity, ending wildlife crime, and environmental justice. We find and protect rare, threatened, and endangered species of animals and plants, detect and prevent the spread of invasive species and disease, stop animal poaching and trafficking, and ensure equitable sharing of conservation benefits and environmental impacts. By piloting innovative canine techniques and implementing AI and lab technology, we maximize the impact dogs have on conservation. 

Can you tell me about your dogs? 

We source our dogs from all over the country from shelters, breed rescues, or as "career-change" dogs from other organizations based on qualities like intense toy focus and high energy— traits that can make rescue dogs hard to place in traditional homes. Our toy-loving, rescued, rehomed, and career-change dogs love their jobs. Their drive motivates them to turn this “job” into the best day ever, and it’s a fun, rewarding game for them. Outside of work, provide them with the best of care throughout their careers and through their retirement and beyond. 

What do you train your dogs to do? 

Our dogs are fast, efficient, agile, portable, and endlessly trainable, making them a vital partner in conservation work. These high-energy pups have the drive and motivation necessary to become natural experts at finding the hard-to-find, from seedling invasive plants to the scat of an endangered lizard. The dogs learn what scent we want them to find through reward-driven games with our trainers. Depending on the project, they can detect certain plants, animals, and scat, finding targets up to 40 times faster than other methods. Their results have near-perfect accuracy, and they’re able to search for multiple targets simultaneously. 

Where do you work? 

Our reach and experience extends across 45 US states and 36 countries so far, including Canada, Argentina, Chile, China, South Africa, Botswana, and many more. When our dogs aren’t on deployment, they live on our 44-acre training facility in Montana. Our training center is the home base for our dogs and has an agility yard, diverse field training spaces, open areas for dogs to just be dogs, and loving homes where they can relax and cuddle up after a long day. The facility also has a community learning center as we expand into more community science efforts.