Dogs are our best friends, it’s something we have actually heard a lot prior to. They’re clever, faithful, goofy and constantly have your back.
A K9 reaction unit in South Africa is making itself recognized for combating poachers and protecting wildlife, even better than people.
Whether Beagle or bloodhound, no dog is too tiny to be part of the group. They boast a success rate of 68 per cent, compared to the 5 percent when they aren’t about.
They begin their training when they are simply tiny puppies and become adult canines that give great help to the park rangers.
In fact, they have actually currently saved over 45 rhinos from being poached in South Africa.
A ‘K9 Master’ called Johan van Straaten at the college claims: “The data we collect for this used learning project, targeted at informing best practice, shows we have avoided approximately 45 rhinos being killed since the free monitoring canines came to be operational in February 2018.”
South Africas is home to 80% of the worlds rhino population, and therefore the work that these dogs do is important for their survival.
” In the areas where the Southern African Wild animals College patrol, the success rate of the dogs is around 68 percent using both on and off-leash free tracking canines, compared to in between three to 5 percent without any canine capacity,” van Straaten said.
” The game-changer has actually been the free tracking canines who have the ability to track at speeds much faster than a human can, in surface where the best human trackers would lose spoor.”
” They begin training from birth and are socialized from an extremely young age. They find out how to track, bay at a person in a tree, and comply with standard obedience,” he explained.
South Africa is hit hardest by rhino poachers because of the high population and high number of poachers, therefore there is nowhere better for this project to be active.
” At 6 months we placed all that training with each other much more formally– they do have the necessary ability to do the work at a more youthful age, but are not mature enough to deal with all the stress of real operations. Depending on a number of factors, dogs come to be operational at around 18 months old.”
