The four-legged pets trained to sniff out some damaging and invasive pests. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
They may be man’s best friend but they’re also angling to be Agriculture’s best friend. Detector Canines, trained by the USDA’s PPQ program, are learning how to spot and stop spotted Lanternflies and Japanese beetles before it’s too late. These highly trained dogs represent some of the recent successes of the Agricultural Detector Canines strategic initiative. Its goal is to expand the use of detector dogs to enhance domestic pest surveys, detect pests early, and facilitate the trade of U.S. agricultural products.
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services wants to use PPQ-trained detector dogs to keep the spotted lantern fly out of the state.
In Oregon, PPQ set up a collaborative pilot project with the Oregon Department of Agriculture to assess the effectiveness of detector dogs in finding JB larvae.
Listen to Cathy Isom’s This Land of Ours program here.