Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
CNN
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Max makes an unlikely conservation worker, and not just because he’s a dog.
He’s also bred for hunting. But instead, the English Springer Spaniel is using his supercharged sense of smell to sniff out koala scat in a bid to help save the iconic Australian animal.
Koalas are native to Australia and in 2022 the government listed them as endangered on most of the country’s east coast. By some estimates, their numbers have halved in the last 20 years, due to a number of threats including habitat reduction, disease, drought and fires.
When Max discovers koala droppings, he lays down with the find between his front paws and nudges at it with his nose, says Jack Nesbitt, of Canines for Wildlife, which trains dogs for conservation-related tasks. Max is rewarded with his favorite treat – a tennis ball.
The scat provides a trove of valuable information. Analysis in the lab can tell ecologists if the koala has diseases like chlamydia, which can cause blindness and infertility, and is now common among koalas.
Genetic analysis can also show how a koala is related to others around it, and how it’s moving through a habitat. “We’re able to identify individual koalas from their poos,” says Nesbitt, who founded Canines for Wildlife with his parents.
In late 2024, Max identified a new group of koalas inland of Coffs Harbor, a coastal city between Sydney and Brisbane, which, significantly, appeared to be chlamydia free.
Extinct by 2050?
The biggest threat to koalas is the destruction of habitat by clearing land for agriculture, housing, mining and forestry, according to the findings of a parliamentary inquiry released in 2020. It also said that without “urgent government intervention” koalas will go extinct before 2050 in New South Wales, and that a government estimate that 36,000 koalas remain in New South Wales is “outdated and unreliable.”
Land clearing can reduce food sources for koalas, who are picky eaters surviving mainly on poisonous eucalypt species, which they have adapted to digest, and occasionally other related plants. Habitat loss can also isolate a koala from potential mates, and crossing roads or the backyards of homes exposes them to risks like vehicles and pet dogs.
Climate change poses another threat, not least from the increased risk of wildfires. At least 5,000 koalas were killed in New South Wales by bushfires in the 2019 to 2020 season, according to the parliamentary inquiry.
The government has committed tens of millions of dollars to create a 315,000-hectare Great Koala National Park. According to conservationists, logging continues within its proposed boundaries. A spokesperson for the New South Wales government told CNN that while work to establish the park is carried out, the government has directed forestry operations to stop in areas being assessed for the park which are hubs for “critical multi-generational resident koalas and their habitats.”
Canines for Wildlife doesn’t engage in advocacy, but it says some groups use its data to show the usage and importance of areas at risk of logging, in the hopes of influencing the state government’s decision around what forest will be protected.
Nesbitt says that groups like city councils use Canines for Wildlife’s data when making planning decisions; the organization is now working on another project in a different area of Coffs Harbor, which has one of the largest koala populations in New South Wales.
“Finding those areas of habitat that are the most important for protection, and being able to identify that with evidence, is probably the most important impact they could have,” says Nesbitt, of the dogs.
Stuart Blanch, of WWF-Australia, tells CNN that koala detection methods have evolved in recent decades to get a more accurate estimate of koala occupancy in an area. Once, conservationists relied on methods like listening for koalas – they make loud bellowing and growling noises – or using a spotlight at night to spot shining eyes.
Today, methods like drone monitoring and using dogs for scat detection have become more popular, though those options are more expensive.
Dogs detecting scat have some benefits over drones, he adds. They can detect the presence of a koala after it has moved on, and in places with thick foliage that drones might not be able to see into.
Canines for Wildlife dogs have done work with other species, like the endangered Hastings River mouse, and the organization is currently training dogs to detect the Kroombit Tinker frog, which is critically endangered.
Although dogs might not seem like natural conservationists, Nesbitt says they’re the perfect tool to have in an ecologist’s toolkit. He adds: “Their ability to see the world through their nose, is a sensor that we just don’t have access to in any other way.”