Working dogs are focus of special meeting in Litchfield

LITCHFIELD — The Litchfield Garden Club will sponsor an Open Conservation Meeting at noon March 12, at the Litchfield Community Center. The speaker will be Megan Parker, co-Founder and Director of Research for Working Dogs for Conservation, the world’s leading conservation detection dog organization.

Working Dogs for Conservation has traveled to five different continents to consult, collaborate, and build capacity to make conservation happen. WD4C’s trained dogs have found Chinese bush clover in Iowa, yellow star thistle in Colorado, rosy wolf snails in Hawaii, and brown tree snakes in Guam. Their dogs have become an invaluable tool for protecting pristine habitats and eradicating invasive species.

WD4C dogs can detect weeds before they break the surface, animals that live below ground, and aquatic organisms invisible to the human eye. The four WD4C 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 fish.

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 conservation detection dogs in 1996.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. The Litchfield Community Center is located at 421 Bantam Road, Route 202, Litchfield.

For information, contact tangohampton@gmail.com. For additional information about the Litchfield Garden Club, please visit their website at litchfieldgardenclub.org. Further details about WD4C can be found at wd4c.org