Man’s Best Friend Fights Wildlife Crime
“Dogs are like life partners, they need commitment.” – Wilson Kaluba
Man’s best friend? Wilson would agree. Wilson had worked with detection dogs in Zambia for over half a decade. During this time, he has formed a formidable bond with his K9 partner, Zhorka. Zhorka is a five-year-old German Shepherd and one of Wilson’s closest allies. Originally bred as herding dogs, German Shepherds are now commonly used in disability assistance, law enforcement and increasingly in wildlife conservation. Their courage, loyalty, and guarding instincts as some of their best-known qualities. Qualities that Wilson can attest to.
It is common knowledge that dogs have an amazing sense of smell. Scientists say that dogs’ sense of smell overpowers our own by orders of magnitude. They are 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute[1]. What does this mean to you and me? Let’s put it this way. While we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools[2]. With this keen sense of smell, the right dog can be trained to track anything that emits an odour. Whether dead or alive, flora or fauna, on land or even under the sea, a well-trained detection dog can find it.
In Zhorka’s case, her odour-detection skills are used to disrupt Zambia’s illegal wildlife trade. She is a member of one of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife’s Detection Dogs Units. Zhorka is a law enforcement officer. A working dog, trained imprint on elephant ivory, pangolin scales, rhino horn and bushmeat to name a few. To “imprint” simply means training a dog to recognize specific odours.
Every day, humans like Wilson and dogs like Zhorka, partner to find illegal wildlife products being smuggled across Zambia. Together, they and the other dogs in Zhorka’s unit have had amazing success. This isn’t surprising as Zhorka was born into this business. Bred for her keen senses and ability to work well with people. However, Wilson’s story is a bit different.
In 2016, Wilson was a DNPW officer based at Lusaka National Park. He was posted there to monitor the white rhinos living in the park. Something he did for many years. Over this time in the park, he built a rapport with the animals. However, having arrived at the park in 2010, after six years, he was ready for a new challenge.
He vividly remembers hearing an advertisement on the radio. There was a call for officers to join a new team of detection dog handlers. For an avid animal lover like Wilson, this was a dream come true. He promptly applied and joined 24 other shortlisted candidates for weeks of intensive training with Invictus K9. Invictus are an organisation with vast experience in developing and strengthening working dog units. They have worked with dig units across Zambia including in Lower Zambezi National Park, Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe. Wilson and his fellow trainees were in good hands as Jay Crafter and Michael Hensman them through weeks of intense physical and phycological training.
The 24 were brought down to only four and Lusaka’s Detection Dog Unit was born.
“I successfully completed my training and was assigned a dog named Tommy, a Vizsla breed from Belgium”, Wilson retells. He had Tommy had many successes over the years. Alongside Alna, Rambo and Bos, three other detection dogs in the unit. Some of their highlights include finding over one tonne of illegal bushmeat on a truck on the road from Ngabwe. Another time they found two suspects within a lodge in Kapiri trying to sell a leopard’s skin. At a checkpoint they set up near Luano they found a 50-year-old man smuggling illegal bushmeat. Their tales are simply too many to tell.
Sadly, after many years together Tommy retired and was replaced by Zhorka. However, now they too are going on many adventures to capture wildlife criminals.
Wilson describes working with dogs as one would listening to soothing music. “It calms me, and the dog makes my job very easy.” It takes rarely takes my dog more than five minutes to search a property thoroughly. Something that might take humans hours to do.
With success come challenges. The use of dogs to conduct investigations and detect wildlife products is new to the Zambian public. Many are uncomfortable with the dogs despite them being well-trained. The team have spent hundreds of hours training in buildings and around both adults and children to ensure the dogs are comfortable around them and not distracted. They are, after all, working dogs. As people are familiarised with the dogs and see them at roadblocks, during operations or even at our airports, mindsets are shifting.
Wilson and his team are some of the unsung heroes of conservation work in Zambia. Alongside two other detection dog units in Zambia, they illustrate how the deep connection between man and his best friend can save the other life on this planet. Zambians often have mixed feelings about dogs. They are adored as pets but also feared by many. Wilson and the detection dog unit have nothing but praise for their friends. Dogs have changed their careers and their lives.
[1] Dogs’ Dazzling Sense of Smell, Peter Tyson Thursday, October 4, 2012, PBS – Nova
[2] Inside of a dog: what dogs see, smell, and know, Horowitz, Alexandra, New York: Scribner, 2009.