FROM THE ASHES

PEOPLE

We meet Ryan Tate who, with his English springer spaniel, Taylor, are searching for surviving koalas.

IN THE DAYS that followed the Crestwood-lake Innes fire near Port Macquarie, Ryan Tate and his koala detection dog Taylor, a four-year-old English springer spaniel, searched to find surviving koalas. Smoke lingered as they moved quickly and quietly through the canopied fringes of the scorched forest on the NSW Mid North Coast, after some 2880 hectares of essential koala habitat was destroyed.

Ryan, wearing a fire-retardant suit, hard hat and 15-kilogram backpack, runs behind Taylor in the summer heat as she seeks out the scent of koalas. She has been trained to be as quiet as possible so as not to stress the animals. Her mission is to find the target odour and then freeze.

Ryan and his wife Jen operate Tate Animal Training Enterprises, which includes conservation and detection dogs. The pair met while working at Taronga Zoo and married nine years ago. Today, they have a son Lennox, five, as well as three-month-old twin daughters Evie and Wren who had just arrived when the fires hit. The girls were only 10 days old and still in hospital when Ryan contacted Port Macquarie’s Koala Hospital.

“It was chaos but I know the area well and I had permits to be in there with the dogs. I felt a moral obligation to help out any way we could,” says the 36-year-old who lives on a property near Port Macquarie and is familiar with the Lake Innes landscape. “It was absolutely heartbreaking, especially the first couple of weeks I was out in the field,” he says. But as the days passed, they started to have success.

“We hadn’t found anything all day and then Taylor alerted me to a huge tree twice. She kept sitting below it in two different locations and I said, ‘I think she’s trying to tell me there’s a mum and a joey here.’ Sure enough, five minutes later the volunteers from the Koala Hospital found a very beautiful and healthy mother and joey that had narrowly escaped the horrendous bushfire,” he says.

It’s moments like this — finding hope in the ashes — that makes Ryan’s work in bushfire rescue so rewarding, despite the devastating loss of wildlife and habitat. In the following weeks, his dogs discovered many surviving koalas while other crews he worked with found even more.

“It’s such an emotionally and physically demanding job,” he explains. “When you find a koala at the end of the day it’s overwhelmingly joyful.” Once Taylor has located a live animal and Ryan has marked its location, organisations such as the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie then assess and remove the animal for treatment as required. >

“You can teach any dog to use its nose to find things for you but to do it every day, under the conditions I work in, you need a dog bred for the purpose.”

Caring for wildlife and animals has been a lifelong calling for Ryan. He studied marine biology and worked at Taronga Zoo from the age of 19, initially as a marine mammal keeper, then later as supervisor of the marine animal department where he gained experience in animal training.

“I was an animal nut from birth and one of those lucky people who always knew what I wanted to do professionally. I did everything I could imagine to do in the marine biology space — I went to Antarctica and Kangaroo Island. Then I was ready for the next challenge and pursued my passion for dog training, especially conservation dogs,” he says.

For the past 15 years he has run a side business training birds and dogs, and made the switch to full-time detection dog work four years ago. Aside from Taylor, he has Raffa, a three-year-old malinois trained on animal scats, five-year-old Connor, an English springer spaniel and Sally, a seven-year-old cocker spaniel, both trained on invasive plants and Finn, an eight-year-old Shetland sheepdog.

Ryan carefully selects pups that are bred for this purpose. “You can teach any dog to use its nose to find things for you but to do it every day, under the conditions I work in, you need a dog bred for the purpose,” Ryan explains. “My dogs love every day in the field. Spaniels have been bred for about 700 years to find small animals with their nose and stop when they find them and genetics plays a huge part.”

By the time a dog is one year old it can be field ready. “We are very much a team. I completely rely on them for their nose and they rely on me to keep them safe and put them in the right positions.”

While detection dogs are an efficient tool to find koalas, they are also proficient at conveying when they are not present, moving quickly through an area and saving valuable time and resources. Ryan and his dogs have worked in Far North Queensland and as far south as Tasmania.

“I get to meet some of the most inspiring people in the country and I am a small part of a big team of very dedicated people that are passionate about conservation, wildlife and science. Having your faith restored that people are inherently good is nice,” he explains.

“For me to use my specialised skills in animal training with my own dog and have a direct impact on saving animals is as good as it gets.”

To learn more about Ryan’s work, visit tateanimals.com or follow @tateanimaltraining on Instagram.

Taylor, a four-year-old English springer spaniel, has been trained to sit if she locates a live koala or lay down if she discovers koala droppings. FACING PAGE Ryan Tate of Tate Animal Training Enterprises and his detection dog Taylor.

Taylor in full flight. She has been trained to move quietly so she doesn’t spook the surviving koalas. “Even after bushfires, they are difficult animals to spot and catch,” Ryan says. “My job is to find the animal and get out of there. I might put a flag on the tree or GPS it and then the dogs and I are gone.”

Taylor takes a short rest. CLOCKWISE, FROM RIGHT Ryan and his dog work on the edge of bushfire zones where surviving koalas have retreated to; Ryan has worked with koala detection dogs for National Parks, forestry, Koala Hospital and local councils around Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Taree; the charred earth near Lake Innes.