Mamba—originally named Maggie—was picked up as a stray near Portland, Oregon and placed with the Oregon Humane Society. Shortly after her arrival, she was brought to the play yard by shelter staff as part of her intake assessment. Right away, Mamba demonstrated just how ball obsessed she was, and the shelter—recognizing her toy drive as a sign that she could potentially make a great working dog—reached out to SDF for an evaluation.
Once she had made her way to SDF’s campus, Mamba went through additional screening, and our trainers determined that performance-wise, she was indeed a fantastic working dog candidate! However, her medical screening revealed that she had hip dysplasia, rendering her unable to continue in our search and rescue program.
High-energy Maggie still craved a job, so she went for a trial with k9InSCENTive, LLC, to test her skills in a lower-impact environmental detection career. She excelled at the work and was added to the k9InSCENTive team owned by Lauralea Oliver, who renamed her Mamba.
Mamba and her canine coworkers assist their handlers with data collection for environmental impact studies at wind farms. Formerly done by people alone, a human data collector would walk sections of the wind farm in a grid pattern, looking for the remains of birds and bats killed by turbines. This was a slow process since wind farms can be thousands of acres in size. Accuracy was also an issue as identification was done visually, and animal remains were only sometimes intact.
Putting dogs on the job dramatically improved efficiency and precision. Lauralea, a veteran of these studies, estimates that detection rates increased substantially with dogs in this role. Dogs are so much better at this than humans that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, and others have started making it a requirement that detection dogs assist in their studies, Lauralea says.
Faster and more accurate data collection has made it easier to devise mitigation strategies that protect vulnerable animals. ”[Wind farm operators] can make efforts to minimize impact based on migration patterns, season, and temperature,” Lauralea says, for example, temporarily shutting down turbines in a flight path of migrating birds until they are safely through.
In addition to her wonderful partner and thriving career, Mamba also has some new dog friends—she recently got to work on a project with SDF career-change dogs, Lady and Ptero, and her handler reported that Mamba goes swimming with her best dog friend every day! We’re so thrilled to see Mamba flourishing in all areas of her new life, and we can’t wait to see where this exciting path takes her!