There are many ways that dogs have been trained to help humans and other animals. From thousands of years of herding and guarding livestock to being able to detect cancer, epilepsy, and other diseases in humans, we have relied on the help of dogs for many things. One of the more unusual jobs that dogs take on is that of sniffing out turtles to aid in conservation efforts.
Photo by Ryan Wagner, Image via Iowa City Press-Citizen
Last year on a 40-acre wildlife preserve owned by Johnson County's Bur Oak Land Trust an unusual step was taken in conservation efforts to track rare ornate box turtles, the only native terrestrial turtle species in Iowa. They hired John Rucker and his four Boykin Spaniels to hunt down the turtles in the area. Boykin Spaniels were originally bred to hunt waterfowl and wild turkeys in the South Carolina area.
Rucker was originally trying to train his dogs in a more traditional hunting role when one of them started bringing back turtles instead. He used the turtles to scent-train his other dogs as well. It is no great surprise that they are far more successful at turtle hunting than humans are.
“Find turtle, find turtle," Rucker calls to his dogs. He and his dogs are the only ones known in the world that are doing this. However there are dogs working in other lines of conservation.
While Rucker's home base is off the grid in Montana, much of the time he and his dogs are on the road, living in a modified van, doing work for science and conservation. The dogs are named Jenny Wren, Mink, Jaybird, and Rooster. They track the smell of the reptiles by snuffling through the undergrowth, brush piles, and old logs. The turtles like to burrow, which is one reason they can be so hard to find.
Image via Iowa Public Radio
When one of the turtles is located the dog will pick it up and carry it gently back to Rucker. The dogs are so careful that there is no trauma to their "prey." One by one the turtles are counted, weighed, measured, and their unique under-side designs photographed before they are returned to the wild. This work can only be done during the warmer months of the year. Ornate box turtles hibernate for six months of the year buried three feet below the surface of the prairie.
Image via Iowa Public Radio
The ornate box turtles were once plentiful on the nation's vast prairies. When white settlers arrived and began to turn it all into farm land the turtles lost most of their habitat. Now they are considered threatened in Iowa. The numbers are so low that the removal of just one female from these lands could result in the loss of the area's entire population. And here is when I start to feel bad about my pioneering ancestors who settled in Iowa to begin farming. Oh, well, we can't change that now. We've just gotta change from here forward.
Image via Iowa Public Radio
The poaching of ornate box turtles to sell as pets is another human reason for the decline in their numbers. Their natural predators are coyotes, foxes, and raccoons.
The Bur Oak Land Trust tries to manage their properties with the most vulnerable species in mind. They hope to return this wildlife preserve to what it was like pre-settlement -- "a sunny, open grassland dotted with oak trees, and periodically burned by prairie fires."
Image via Iowa Public Radio
“The smell of the tall grass prairie was overpoweringly beautiful. To see the turtle dogs catching ornate box turtles within sight of a wild bison herds after a summer rain storm was…" Rucker said. "It almost makes you want to just weep to think of all that we have lost and what it would’ve been like 200 years ago.”
On this trip to Johnson County, Iowa, the dogs retrieved 137 ornate box turtles over the course of three days. With the work that Rucker and his turtle dogs are doing, perhaps we will one day be able to see what the prairies were really like. And perhaps the ornate box turtle population can maintain and even recover.
Sources: Iowa Public Radio, WQAD8, Smithsonian Magazine, Iowa City Press-Citizen
