Meet Skye, an English springer spaniel who is one of a ten strong stoat detection dog team working on the Orkney Native Wildlife Project.

That may sound like a lot of dogs, but since 2010, when the first stoat was spotted on Orkney, this INCREDIBLY successful predator has bred in its thousands, posing a huge problem to the island’s wildlife:  

• Its super high metabolism means it eats 25% of its own body weight every day;
• It’s not fussy - eggs, chicks, voles, mice, rabbits, hedgehogs, fish, insects and even roadkill are all acceptable;
• It tends to kill more than it needs to eat and stores the rest to eat later;
• It’s an amazing hunter -  fast, agile, can climb well and has great eyesight, hearing and sense of smell;
• It’s a great swimmer too, and can swim 3 km or more (eg to another island);
• When the baby stoats, called kits, leave home, they can travel over 40 miles in search of their own territory.

Handler and conservationist Chantel Carr explains to Dogs with Jobs presenter Kate Fairweather that just two years ago, stoats were running around all over Orkney. Since then, over 6,000 stoats have been trapped. Now the numbers are coming down, the dogs’ work is even more important, as they actively find stoat scat (poo) and can alert the team to “stoat hot spots”.  

The Orkney team swaps information and best practice with counterparts in New Zealand, where stoats were introduced to keep rabbits down, but have caused the extinction of a number of native birds.  

• Find out more information on the Orkney Native Wildlife Project;
• Find out more about the work of the RSPB in Scotland and NatureScot, which support the Orkney Native Wildlife Project. 

Other dogs working in conservation

• Reid, the bio-security dog, who patrols the Scottish isles 
• Five detection dogs survey the Isle of May for storm petrels
• Barley the conservation dog and his international projects
• Nica, Nettle and Phoenix, the Japanese knotweed detection dogs

Do you work your dog or dogs? 

Kate would love to hear from you.  Get in touch via team@shineradio.uk or katefairweather5@gmail.com, and follow Dogs with Jobs on your podcast app.

© & ℗ Kate Fairweather 2024