Authors: Haack, Nora; Harms, Wiebke;Grimm-Seyfarth, Annegret;

Wildlife detection dogs (WDD) are often used to survey biodiversity, especially to detect particularly hidden and cryptic species. However, training WDDs is costly and time-consuming, thus the amount of experts is low. Contrastingly, many private dog owners are looking for meaningful activities for their dogs. The project IGAMon-Dog therefore aims at enabling dogs and their owners to become voluntary WDD-teams to help monitor invasive species.
We chose three invasive plant species as targets: Fallopia japonica, Impatiens glandulifera and Ambrosia artemisiifolia. The program aims to make training and field methods understandable to dog owners to enable independent training and, after validation, field surveys.
After five months, half of the first 15 participants have been able to train their dogs to detect their target scent. Participants state they benefited by deepening their bond to their dog and by gaining knowledge. We thus assume that the program is rewarding enough to bind dog-owners as long-term participants.
The training benefits both scientists and citizens and seems to offer great potential. However, it requires a substantial effort, precision in training and supervision of the volunteer WDD-teams by experts. Thus, the cost-benefit ratio must now be examined to draw conclusions about its wider applicability.