Turtle-Sniffing Dogs Heading From Montana To Iowa To Save Species

IOWA CITY, IA — The colorful and ornate box turtle is disappearing from Iowa, but luckily for the rare species, some dogs in Montana have a nose for them. John Rucker, a dog trainer from Big Sky Country, is bringing his specially trained dogs to sniff out these pretty but threatend turtles on protected lands near Iowa City.

Rucker is a turtle expert, but his Boykin spaniels weren’t originally trained to sniff them out. He trained them to bring back the birds that hunters bagged, but when one repeatedly brought back turtles gently gripped in its mouth, he decided to turn the accident into a business and let the dogs do what they naturally wanted to do.

Demand for his services, or rather those of his turtle dogs, grew among researchers. The turtles aren’t harmed because the spaniels have soft mouths, and researchers are able to weigh, measure and photograph them before releasing them back in the wild. The data is invaluable in managing the habitat to improve ornate box turtle survival rates.

The ornate box turtle, Iowa’s only native terrestrial turtle, is rapidly disappearing. These turtles are beautiful creatures, with yellow radiating lines from a yellow stripe down the back of their black or brown domed shells. The Bur Oak Land Trust is trying to preserve a small population of them on one of 11 properties it manages. The non-profit land trust, established in 1978, accepts land donations from property owners who want natural areas held in trust, and currently manages about 500 acres.

Jason Taylor, property stewardship specialist for the Bur Oak Land Trust, said he and his colleagues inquired about Rucker’s turtle sniffing spaniels after learning of the success research teams in neighboring Illinois had with them.

Rucker’s spaniels were used to round up turtles in seven northwestern Illinois counties, where they found 85 on sand prairies in just 10 days, besting human searchers who found only 12, according to Big River Magazine.

“The dogs find more ornates in two or three hours than we’d probably find in a whole week or even longer,” Matt Allender, who led a team of University of Illinois scientists working on projects related to reptile health, told Cool Green Science. “We couldn’t do this project without John and the turtle dogs. They’re part of the team.”

The turtles are extremely hard to spot, but leave a scent trail as they move about. They lead generally solitary lives, but their home territories may overlap with those of other members of their species.

The biggest threats to ornate box turtles are farming and development.

“It’s shocking to see the decline in their habitat in Eastern Iowa over the decades,” Jason Taylor, property stewardship specialist for the Bur Oak Land Trust told Dick Hakes for a story in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. “One of the problems is that sandy prairie is also a good place to build a house.”

Rucker, a retired high school science teacher now in his 70s, is expected to arrive in Iowa with his spaniels late this spring. Once the dogs bring in the terrapins, they’ll be weighed, measured and photographed before they’re released back to the wild. They won’t have to be banded or marked in any way.

“We don’t have to notch the shell or attach a tag to identify them, which has been done in other studies,” Taylor said for the story in the Press-Citizen. “We take a photo of the markings on the underside of their shell which are as unique as human fingerprints. It’s as good as banding.”