Meet Barley, who gets to spend all of his time doing what dogs love most: playing outdoors and sniffing poop.
He's been roaming Prince of Wales Island finding wolf scat for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This helps the department track population and maintain healthy hunting quotas. Considering how precarious and targeted wolf populations are, it's great to see them getting support and protection.
"We're checking all of these islands, I think all in all, we're going to hit over 25 islands, we're just getting a ton of data," Kayla Fratt, dog trainer and Ph.D. student told Alaska Public Media. "With that individual identification, (we) will actually be able to say if we detect the same wolf, say on Prince of Wales and on Hessa Island, then we can say that those wolves are using both the main island and these outer islands as well."
Fratt spoke in detail about how their recruitment focuses on high-energy dogs. K9 Conservationists uses toys as a means of reward for finding objectives. Only those with a feverish need for play will have the energy to bound through the wilderness and find their marks. Barley has been especially effective, having found wolf scat over a year old.
"When you get the right dog for this job, there's just nothing they want to do other than go to work," Fratt said.
Other forms of data collection for wolf population tracking have been unreliable, according to Tom Schumacher, the regional supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. They've used contraptions called hairboards that are wrapped in barbed wire and scented to make Wolves want to roll on them, collecting hair as they do so.
"If you say all 3-year-old females never roll on hairboards, then those animals are invisible to the sampling technique," said Schumacher.
Barley's work is very physical, but he gets lots of care, including massages, stretching, and a special diet complete with protein powder and fish oil supplements. Even with all of that pampering, Barley can't keep up this career forever. Barley has already done tours in Guatemala and across the American Midwest.
"He's just over 10 years old. Now this is probably his last big project. You got anything to say?" Fratt asked Barley. "You want to go to work?"
source: https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/wolf-scat-alaska-dog-conservation/
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