Keynote

Megan Parker PhD

Working Dogs for Conservation


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For the Love of a Ball
​Dogs Working to Save Wildlife

Megan received a B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.S. in raptor ecology from Boise State University. She returned to her home state of Montana to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Montana in Wildlife Biology on the scent-marking behavior and territoriality of wild dogs in Botswana. She began pioneering training methods for con- servation detection dogs in 1996. Megan has been involved in dog training, obedience, and search-and-rescue since childhood. She is interested in the international use of conservation working dogs to help under-funded projects acquire excellent data, reduce costs and preserve endangered species.

Working Dogs for Conservation is the world’s leading conservation detection dog organization. We combine expert canine data collection with cutting-edge laboratory techniques to help answer some of the most pressing questions in conservation. Building upon techniques from narcotics detection, cadaver detection, and search and rescue, we have pioneered ways to use dogs’ extraordinary sense of smell to protect wildlife and wild places.

Our dogs can detect weeds before they break the surface, animals that live below ground and aquatic organisms invisible to the human eye. Our co-founders were the  first to train dogs to detect wide-ranging carnivores non-invasively, to uncover illegal snares in Africa, and to find invasive plants, insects, and  sh. We are also at the forefront of the  fight against wildlife tracking, training dogs to detect ammunition, guns, poisons, snares, ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales.