Wildlife Crime Detection

Helping the fight against illegal poaching.

Poaching is more than killing an elephant or a rhino. Increasingly, poaching is conducted by well-funded and equipped criminals who are motivated by slim risk and fat dollars. The horn, ivory, meat and medicines trades are organised crimes of epidemic proportion, similar to the drug trade. It makes sense that we use similar methods to sniff them out.

Our enthusiastic canines are specially trained to battle poachers. With incredible focus, they can locate even the smallest traces of prohibited products such as ivory, leopard skin, tiger claws, rhino horn, shark fin and bushmeat. Significantly, they can also sniff out firearms, poison and snares with an incredible 96 percent accuracy - taking a real bite out of the illicit poaching trade.

Detection dogs to the rescue

At Conservation K9, we train hand-selected dogs to head off traffickers before they can export prohibited products. Working in airports, seaports and other major transit points, our dogs can detect illegal wildlife products hidden in cargo no matter how well they are camouflaged, massively boosting the capacity of customs control.

But that's only the second line of defence. In the field, our dogs work diligently to track the traps, guns and ammunition used to kill vulnerable wildlife - stopping poachers in their tracks.

Compared to drones and satellite surveillance, it's not the most high-tech anti-poaching solution. But it is effective and significantly cheaper. Our dogs work tremendously hard to protect the world's amazing wildlife resources - and they do it all for the love of a ball.