The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a message for would-be wildlife traffickers: there’s a new dog in town, and if you try to bring illegal wildlife parts into the country, there’s a good chance he’s going to sniff you out. And there are more just like him.
That’s because today, the first class of “wildlife detector dogs” and their handlers graduated from training in searching for protected species. In coming weeks, they will be stationed at key ports of entry around the country, searching for wildlife smuggled across U.S. borders. The four retrievers – named Viper, Butter, Lancer and Locket – have been trained as part of a national effort to stem the growing trade in threatened animal parts such as elephant ivory and rhino horn.
