2023_NorthStarVets_Pets_Digital_Issue

REAL PETS, REAL PEOPLE
DOGS AT WORK
Clockwise: (From left)
Fagen, a Belgian malinois,
Dia and Peat, both American
field labradors; Peat
works with handler Arden
Blumenthal; Dia points
out a spotted lanternfly
egg mass on a pine tree
to handler Joshua Beese.
Following Their Noses
NJ CONSERVATIONISTS ARE USING DOGS TO SNIFF OUT INVASIVE SPECIES IN OUR FORESTS.
MOST PEOPLE ARE FAMILIAR with dogs
using their sense of smell to help find
missing people, to detect drugs or even
bombs. But dogs can also be used to sniff
out certain plants, animals and fungi, which
is a big help to conservation experts and
ecologists right here in New Jersey.
Meet Dia, Fagen, and Peat. The three
dogs, along with their handlers, Arden
Blumenthal and Joshua Beese, make up the
New York-New Jersey Trail Conference’s
(NYNJTC) Conservation Dogs Program.
The dogs’ noses help keep forests in New
Jersey and New York safe by sniffing out
invasive species like oak wilt, kudzu, Scotch
broom and the spotted lanternfly.
But it’s not just invasive plant and insect
species the dogs can find. With the dogs’
help, the program keeps tabs on the small
whorled pogonia (New Jersey’s rarest
orchid species), some protected turtle
species, and the movements of bobcats in
the region.
Dia, an American field labrador, proved
herself in a big way on a project to identify
slender false brome in the Lower Hudson
Valley. “To sum it up, Dia found more plants
than we knew about,” Blumenthal says.
Fagen, a Belgian malinois, is a trained
search and rescue dog and “the most handsome
doggo in the Northeast,” according to
his official bio. Fagen joined the team in
2019.
Peat, also an American field labrador, is
the newest sniffer. A Christmas puppy born
on December 25, 2020, he primarily works
with Blumenthal. “He’s goofy; he’s still figuring
out where his limbs are,” she says. “He’s a
big cuddler, he loves food and he loves toys.”
Peat’s first project, at 9 months old, was to
sniff out growths of Scotch broom.
Training a dog to detect a plant or insect
involves much the same process as training
a dog for other scenarios, like finding missing
people. Plants and insects have distinctive
scents, often undetectable to human
noses. The dogs are rewarded with toys and
interactions—or, as Blumenthal describes
it, the game of “I smell X, I get toy.”
Dogs are not subject to the same inherent
biases that humans might be, Blumenthal
says. Humans might end up relying
on what maps and data have already told
them, “whereas dogs are more unbiased
searchers; they’re going to follow their
noses,” she says.
Until May of this year, the team concentrated
on finding egg masses of spotted lanternflies,
an invasive insect species that has
troubled New Jersey’s trees and agriculture
in the last few years.
To learn more about the program, visit
nynjtc.org. —Erin Roll
PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF NEW YORK-NEW JERSEY TRAIL CONFERENCE
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