Wildlife detection dogs successfully sniffed out 13 critically endangered earless dragons in previously unknown burrows in Melbourne’s west, after a training program launched by Zoos Victoria in 2023.
The Victorian grassland earless dragon – Australia’s most imperilled reptile – had not been seen for 50 years and was thought extinct before its remarkable rediscovery on privately owned grassland in 2023.
Given this “second chance” at survival, Garry Peterson, the zoo’s general manager of threatened species, said the organisation launched intensive training and search efforts the same year.
“We’re really lucky to have a second opportunity with this species that was presumed extinct,” Peterson said.
But it wasn’t going to be easy to find them. It’s thought there are probably fewer than 200 dragons left in the wild and the short, nuggetty and extremely rare dragons often hid inside wolf spider burrows or under rocks, making them challenging to find using traditional survey techniques.
That’s where the zoo’s dogs came in.
After a year of training, Daisy, a six-year-old lagotto romagnolo, and Kip, an eight-year-old kelpie cross, had sniffed out 13 of the wild dragons by March this year, in return for treats, cuddles, ball games and praise.
Daisy mostly works with wildlife detection dog officer Dr Nick Rutter, who said it was a “career highlight” when she finally found a dragon on her own in May 2024, making him feel “an overwhelming cascade of joy”.
The palm-sized reptiles were “bloody gorgeous”, he said, with intricate patterns down their backs and striking colours during the breeding season.
Daisy and Kip were chosen for their safe behaviour around small animals and experience surveying for threatened species, including Baw Baw frogs and freshwater turtles.
Each undertook about 80 days of scent-based training and survey work, initially sniffing out a small number of captive animals and graduating to opportunistic lessons in the field when biologists came across a wild dragon.
When assessed, the dog-handler teams detected earless dragons with speed and accuracy, according to results published on the National Environmental Science Program’s Resilient Landscapes hub.
Emma Bennett, who has researched the effectiveness of detection dogs in searching for rare species, said dogs provided a scent-based search method that was complementary to traditional surveys using visual cues.
“If something is hidden, or camouflaged, in a burrow, and just difficult to see, it might be easy to smell,” she said.
Detection dogs were being successfully used in Australia, as well as globally, for finding threatened species, searching for invasive viruses and pathogens, and conducting bird and bat surveys at windfarms.
Bennett, who has worked with detection dogs for 20 years and was not involved with the zoo project, said success relied on a strong partnership between human and hound.
“From the dog’s perspective, the role of the human is to carry the ball around for when they do find something, and then to throw it,” Bennett said.
Zoos Victoria also trained two other dogs, Sugar and Moss, to search for dragon scats – droppings roughly the size of corn kernels. While the dogs were effective at finding them, they were limited by how quickly scats were scavenged by ants and other invertebrates in the wild.
Historical records show the Victorian grassland earless dragon was once recorded in St Kilda, Moonee Ponds and Sunbury, habitat that disappeared as housing and farmland expanded. Approximately 0.5% of suitable grassland habitat remains.
Dr Jane Melville, senior curator of terrestrial vertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute – who named the Victorian grassland earless dragon as a distinct species in 2019 – said its rediscovery was a reminder that animals could still persist, even in places where they hadn’t been seen in decades.
“They’ve shown amazing resilience,” she said. “This little dragon has managed to hold on under really difficult circumstances.”
