Working Dogs for Conservation
Western Montana nonprofit trains rescued dogs to protect wildlife all over the globe
TURAH — At one point, things looked pretty grim for Charlie.
An 8-year-old black dog with flappy ears and endless energy, he and his brother were found tied to a post in California years ago, emaciated and neglected. But he was nursed back to health and spent time with the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, training to help look for victims in piles of rubble.
He wasn’t quite cut out for that job, however, but he did find his forever home eventually at a longtime nonprofit organization just east of Missoula called Working Dogs for Conservation.
So he’s spent the past five years of his life detecting rare species, like sea wolves in Canada or leopard lizards and kit foxes in the southwestern United States.
Working Dogs for Conservation takes in, or sometimes rescues, dogs from a variety of situations and then the staff trains them to be able to detect specific scents, from the smell of endangered black-footed ferrets to the smell of invasive aquatic species on a boat.
Founded in 2000 by four Montana women, the organization has worked in 36 countries and in 45 states, doing everything from ecological monitoring of endangered species to finding environmental contaminants or invasive species to tracking wildlife crimes.
“The impact these dogs make every day is incredible, but it’s our community that makes this work possible,” said Aimee Hurt, a cofounder of the organization and director of Special Projects.