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I'm Richard Dodd and you're listening to the Ecology Academy podcast.

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This is a show where we get to talk and learn about all things ecological,

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including interviews with top ecologists, both employers and employees,

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those working with ecologists, and also aspiring and inspiring career-seeking

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individuals setting out to make a difference.

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The show aims to provide you with insights, advice and inspiration to help you

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succeed and excel as an effective ecologist and to make a real difference to

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our natural environment. Today on the podcast, I have Nikki Glover. Now, Nikki has 10 years of experience

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in assisting and managing large-scale development infrastructure projects for

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clients and has experience working with local planning authorities.

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For the past seven years, she's provided ecological support for Wessex Water

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in relation to large-scale waste and supply expansion schemes,

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as well as major pipeline schemes and wetland creation.

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And since 2017, she's been trained to handle Great Crested Newt detection dog

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Freya, a Springer Spaniel, and is currently accompanying Freya operationally

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on translocation schemes in support of major pipeline installation works.

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And Nikki also holds Natural England survey licences for Great Crested Newt

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and Hazel Dormouse, and also a development licence from Natural England.

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So, Nikki, welcome to the Ecology Academy podcast.

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Thank you for having me. I'll also mention we've also got two other dogs who

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are also helping with the Great Christian Nuke Detection.

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So we've got Nuki, he's been operational now for a couple of years,

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and we've got Obi, he's the apprentice, as we call him.

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He's hopefully going to be operational next year after a whole host of assessments

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this year. Oh, fantastic.

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Well, welcome to you all. I can't see any of your companions.

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So today we're going to be talking about Great Gresham Newton and particularly

1:55

about Great Gresham Newton licensing and also look at the surveying but before

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we start that let's hear a little bit about yourself so tell me a little bit

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about your background and how you got into ecology and you know up to where

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you're working with Wessex Waters today please. Yes, I am currently a senior ecologist at Wessex Water. I was studying, I'm sorry, studying.

2:19

It was an animal behaviour diploma at Reaseheath College.

2:24

And I think the last module we had was on ecology.

2:27

And I absolutely fell in love with it. And I thought, this is amazing.

2:30

I really want to get into this. So, yeah, I ended up doing environmental biology

2:34

at Plymouth University. And, yeah, I fell into ecology afterwards. So helping a lot with bat surveys,

2:41

trying to get my foot in the door. And then I got a job within a local planning

2:45

authority down in Devon so I helped assess

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with the planning application side of things and then

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yeah I managed to get a full-time position within an

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ecology company AMEC which is now Foster

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Wheeler I think it's called I keep changing the names

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yeah and then yeah started at

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WIG a couple years later and got

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seconded out to Wessex Water water yeah and then

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wessex water took me on full time yeah and

3:12

i think i was on a mitigation scheme and i

3:15

was translocating some newts and i thought there's got to

3:18

be a better way to obviously find these great crested newts and yes i did some

3:22

research i got home there was a cim magazine on the floor and it had my now

3:28

trainer louise wilson on the front from conservation canine consultancy and

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she was doing back carcass detection with dogs and i thought you know now I've

3:36

got to look into this, this looks amazing, maybe we could use dogs to find Great Crested Newt.

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So I did a bit more research and found that, yeah, Louise had actually done

3:44

Great Crested Newt detection of David Orchard. So, yeah, basically I went off and stupidly got a puppy without any prior sort

3:52

of training. As you do, yes. Did everything you shouldn't do. I also imprinted Freya onto curry powder,

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so she was the world's first Morrison's Own Medium Strength Curry Powder Detection Dog.

4:03

Well, that's a first, there you go, as you say.

4:06

So everything you shouldn't do. And then I went to Louise when Freya was about two years old.

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Basically have her assessed and obviously me assessed as a handler because that was a big part of it.

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And yeah, so Louise was just, why have you got this curry powder today?

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Why is the dog on curry powder? You need to have such small scent profiles.

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You know, curry powder's not really going to cut it.

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So we had to transfer her over to Bedbugs, which had a small odor and kind of went away with that.

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And Freya passed with flying colours. those words, I need a lot of training and yeah.

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And then yeah, I applied for a license through natural and then 2017 had that

4:41

rejected because we went in blind and didn't have a clue what they wanted.

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And then yeah, so they came back with a whole host of bullet points of what,

4:48

you know, I needed to produce in order to get a great, uh, detection dog license

4:53

to keep obviously the newts in captivity to imprint the dog.

4:56

And one of it was research. Yeah, yeah. Basically he said, well, okay, I'll do a load of research,

5:02

see how effective the dogs are and kind of got addicted to that research.

5:07

I met Robert Yale at a Hurt Workers meeting back in 2019 through David and basically

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said what I started to do with the dogs. Yeah.

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And what we were finding out in the field with the dogs actually correlated

5:21

with his GPS tracking, his radio tracking study. So who's the story?

5:26

Dr robert yale so he yeah the

5:29

author of the crested newt book and yeah he's

5:32

done he basically all his research side of

5:35

things has basically implemented kind of like the licensing procedure

5:38

because it's given us a lot of information about how great

5:41

crested newts use the land terrestrially and their movement from

5:44

the ponds out into the terrestrial environment so

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you know how we've got our both the zones of 250 meters 500

5:50

meters that kind of stemmed from robert's radio tracking in

5:53

studies that he's done yeah so yeah so

5:57

he uh is now my supervisor so i'm doing

6:00

a phd so i got a bit addicted to the research kind

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of thing so initially it was a master's by research and loads

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of questions were still being opened and yeah so i thought well you know we'll

6:10

make it into a phd and do it more long term kind of try and understand all the

6:15

environmental influences that affects the odor and how we can kind of adopt

6:20

the training procedures to make the dogs perform really well operationally.

6:25

So yeah, really tight, intricate searches to make sure that we're covering the

6:28

ground appropriately and the newts are picked up by the dogs.

6:31

The scent, yeah, we've basically found that they can detect them underground.

6:35

Two-meter distance as well, we've found them. Yeah, and the soil type has an

6:40

influence as well on the odour movement.

6:43

So sandy soil, yeah, is good for dogs to detect as opposed to clay soil,

6:49

soil, because we think the clay soil has the moisture content to hold the ogre.

6:53

So yeah, and they're aquatic, as we say, they're amphibious species.

6:57

So whether their pheromones are kind of, yeah.

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Communicate through them the moisture content is uh yes there's

7:04

a whole host of reasons it could be but yeah so we've been really interested

7:07

in and also vegetation density the dogs have the ability to detect in different

7:12

glass lengths and all sorts of things so you've written the paper there so i'll

7:20

probably link into the show notes to to the article there but i mean i'm just.

7:23

Literally reading part of the abstract here and it mentions about

7:26

contrary to existing studies with detection dogs in

7:29

in human forensic context detection was

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generally oh yeah so what was the difference between human forensic

7:37

and maybe you know detection so with cadaver

7:40

detection the dogs were better on sandy soil and we

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think that's because it's more of a gassy odor whereas great

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cresting it's a completely different odor that's why

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you really need to understand what the dogs are detecting how

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your odor is going to be moving interacting with the

7:55

environment because that that'll really influence your search strategy so

7:58

if i'm doing a search over spoil you

8:02

know spoil mound that's been dug out for pipeline pit

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then you know if it's sandy soil i've got

8:07

to work a lot more sort of intricately over that

8:10

and i'll maybe get them to obviously take away the

8:13

sandy soil but you know in sections whereas a

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clay soil i've got more confidence that the dogs will be able to detect them at

8:20

a suitable you know depth and that and especially

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i think if if it's raining as well that'll have

8:25

a really big influence on that scent movement that scent capture

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so if we went and did a search on sandy soil that was actually

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really wet i think that the odor would still be captured

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in that a lot better than yeah if it's dry a really dry day and so yeah there's

8:40

all these things that we have to think about and not just uh newt sniffing dog

8:45

sniffing a newton in a container there's so many elements to it that we've really

8:50

got to think about real world yeah different environments.

8:52

Yeah, optimise the performance of the dogs and it's harmless as well.

8:56

Well, I suppose in terms of, I mean, we're going to be talking also about mitigation

9:02

licences and the different types of mitigation licences that detection dogs

9:06

have helped, you know, secure or show us in one way.

9:09

So let's, obviously to obtain the mitigation licence, any licence at all,

9:14

you know, requirements of the the survey element to

9:17

it and then the you know analysis so in

9:20

terms of you know you mentioned you know part of

9:23

that in terms of the survey methodology there so you know and also mentioned

9:27

about the struggles to actually get natural england and maybe other licensed

9:31

opponents to understand the efficacy of of using detection dogs so just talk

9:38

me through how it differs from a i'm I'm going to use the air quotes here,

9:42

standard survey techniques for surveying for grey grass and yeats.

9:48

So with the dogs, obviously if we're, it depends on the scale of work.

9:54

So we use the dogs a lot for precautionary methods, methods of searching.

9:58

And we found that the dogs are actually better than hand searchers as well.

10:02

I'll be releasing another paper hopefully soon showing the difference between

10:06

a hand searcher with over 20 years of experience in comparison to dogs, both Nuki and Freya.

10:11

And yeah, they basically cover the ground a lot faster as well.

10:15

So, yeah, I think they managed to find all the newts within half the time and

10:19

the pan searcher was still there on his hands and he was like half an hour late

10:22

and still trying to find those newts. So, yeah, that's a really interesting study.

10:27

Yeah. And we've also, we have someone in the team, our manager,

10:31

who's got a low impact class license. So if we're doing small scale works, for instance, you know,

10:37

drill pits aren't very big, but they're within close proximity to your pond.

10:41

We'd eDNA obviously the ponds first to see

10:44

whether the great crest newts are there they're present we don't

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tend to use dogs dogs can obviously prove presence

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but as a tool to determine likely

10:53

absence it's difficult because obviously when newts

10:56

are out terrestrially they could be anywhere within around the pond

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to you know up to a kilometer I think they've even radio trapped

11:02

newts so if you've got a small population and they

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could be literally anywhere within the environments i think it'd be

11:08

quite difficult to obviously prove likely absence

11:12

but obviously presence you could you could confirm with

11:15

the dogs but yeah and basically yeah so

11:18

we would do stuff under low class licenses which

11:21

work perfectly with the dogs uh so we.

11:24

Can put the fence in it we don't have to do any pitfall trapping i

11:27

like to keep carpet tiles down just to make sure

11:30

we get your around for beans as well because obviously they'll get

11:33

trapped within the construction area and the dogs are only locating

11:37

great crested newts so we've also done odor

11:39

discrimination trials and the dogs were at 98%

11:43

effective at discriminating between great crested newts and other

11:46

amphibian species because obviously they hold a higher level of protection than

11:50

your common toad and your smooth newts and palmate newts so yeah but i'd love

11:56

to get a general herp dog so they could obviously locate every single amphibian

12:00

and then have my I specific just Great Crested Noodles.

12:03

But that's down in the pipeline.

12:06

So that would be trained for, you know, not just amphibians in general,

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it is specifically for Great Crested Noodles. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

12:17

Yeah, so, and then we've also, you know, if we have larger schemes that we're

12:22

within close proximity to. Ponds with great crescent utes obviously we have to do the

12:26

bottle trapping to work out population size and

12:30

then we have to go down the european protected species license protocol

12:33

and actually and so we had a job last year where we

12:36

had a burst main well a main that basically had

12:39

root ingress and it was potentially going to cause a

12:42

pollution incident if we don't obviously act quickly and

12:45

repair that main so we had to unfortunately

12:49

that that main was positioned on a receptor site so located

12:53

obviously as a result of development and

12:56

there was quite a large population of great cressinutes there and

12:59

the main sat right next to the pond so in

13:02

that instance we did have to go down european protected species license

13:05

but we agreed with natural england that we didn't have to do pitfall

13:08

trapping and we also were able to clear that area within

13:11

third of the time of obviously in comparison to

13:14

doing the pitfall trapping and the 30

13:17

minimum 30 days that we have to do for that so

13:20

yeah it was really effective we found 55 great crystal newts

13:23

in under two hours as well so and that

13:26

was above and below ground exact precise location from

13:30

the dogs i had to get my little trowel out and sensitively dig down and you

13:35

know get the newts out and also working out how many new tools about 10 in one

13:39

kind of area as well so making sure obviously running the dog back over to see

13:44

if they're indicating if i've missed any or yeah so um.

13:49

Yeah so we have obviously different depending on the scale of

13:52

impacts we usually have a couple of large scale translocation

13:56

schemes a year and then loads of precautionary little

13:59

searches and then quite a few like

14:02

loads of low impact pass license schemes as well there's

14:04

a lot of our works are linear so we tend to come into contact close proximity

14:09

to ponds quite frequently yeah because you mentioned about uh we start there

14:15

in the introduction about you know the development So the majority of your works

14:20

with the Wessex Water are under this development licence?

14:23

If i'm applying for a european protected species license

14:26

and i'm the named ecologist on the

14:29

last i have to have be registered as the development

14:32

license holder so yeah i asked

14:36

for that a few years back and originally

14:39

natural england didn't want to give me the the development

14:43

license because i've made the i've only

14:45

ever really dealt with temporary impacts and i haven't done permanent but

14:49

obviously being within a water company 99 of our works

14:52

is temporary we would never really impact like permanently impact ponds and

14:57

we always try and avoid you know as part of the mitigation hierarchy and yeah

15:01

it's more flexible where we can obviously put the pipelines as well but yeah

15:05

so i did argue that in order for me to get that development license i would have to.

15:10

Basically infill some ponds or they cause

15:13

some permanent impacts to an area or basically

15:16

leave Wessex join a consultancy work for more housing development

15:20

style projects and then come back and apply

15:22

for it or we just outsource the work to consultants so luckily

15:26

they did yeah they did kind of agree that it was

15:29

difficult obviously being a water company and yeah

15:31

99% of our works is temporary so yeah they

15:34

did grant me that development license which was great but yeah

15:37

my manager has a low impact glass license and it yeah

15:40

like I say it works so well with detection collection dog work

15:43

that's really really nice flexible i think it's a

15:46

two-week process license registry registration process

15:50

as well to get site registered and yeah

15:54

we can kind of be flexible on the approach of how long we think

15:57

we need to do obviously the plans location for that will depend on size of the

16:02

area the habitat type and things how much refuge is in there as well so see

16:07

for working the dogs in the day they're indicating and it's quite a difficult

16:11

structure for instance we We had indications on the sides of a manhole, like they basically.

16:18

Stony deer around the manhole so i couldn't get any

16:21

newts out of that area so i then came back

16:24

with the dogs at night and the newts were out they're coming out

16:27

of the area so i could then take them

16:29

yeah away so obviously it's trying to

16:32

yeah kind of decide how to appropriately use

16:36

the dogs at different times a day as well well exactly so

16:40

in terms of i suppose the differences between between

16:43

and i'm saying i'll use that air quote again then you know a

16:46

standard standard approach to surveying and

16:49

and then also the the translocation exercise extradication

16:52

of greatest needs how does it so if

16:56

if someone was applying for a mitigation license you know not using dogs at

17:01

all what would you what do you do differently other than using dogs in terms

17:07

of the maybe the licence application aspect to that and does that have an impact upon,

17:13

I suppose, the information required from Natural England to determine the licence application?

17:18

Is that if we don't use dogs? Yeah, yeah.

17:21

So are there any additional elements you have to provide or fewer in terms of

17:26

the licence application? We have to provide more if we're using the dogs in terms of like a method statement

17:31

to show how we'll be using the dogs because the actual application doesn't have

17:36

that as a recognized method.

17:39

Yeah. So we have to provide a bit more information on that.

17:43

Whereas your standard stuff would be a pitfall trapping and obviously that's

17:49

recognized in your hand searching and things like that.

17:53

So, but yeah, the dogs are becoming more recognized as a method.

17:56

So I'm hoping in the future we'll start to see that on the license distance

18:00

application forms, which would be, yeah, fantastic.

18:04

But yeah, naturally I'm seeing a lot more on board with the whole use of detection drugs.

18:08

Now which is which is fantastic and they're the

18:11

only like i said the only method that we can use to actually detect

18:14

the newts at distance you know at depth

18:17

you know there's nothing else out there that we can we can use and fingertip

18:21

searching is i don't know about you how much you've done with that it's not

18:26

very effective at all especially if newts are subterranean you're not going

18:30

to be able to detect them you know with your fingers and visually on the surface so yeah using drugs No,

18:36

I haven't acquired the ability to detect newts underground.

18:44

It's beyond me that. So in terms of then, you mentioned about the low impact licensing and the full license there.

18:57

Now, I know we briefly touched on at the moment, you're not using it for district licensing.

19:04

Is that correct yeah we haven't i guess it's down to us not really knowing much

19:11

we haven't done a lot of research on it to be honest within west because i say

19:15

a lot of the works are temporary so. We haven't had to really go down that route we do

19:20

have a scheme coming up next year that might

19:23

actually be good to use under the district but

19:26

i need to obviously do a bit more research on that

19:28

and i'm doing a presentation for nature space in a few weeks so

19:31

it'd be interesting and to understand their take on how they

19:34

think dogs will kind of fit in with the district level licensing scheme

19:38

that they're obviously rolling out yeah so it'd

19:42

be interesting to see but yeah yeah

19:45

i guess watch this case yeah well let's

19:49

say because it's i mean obviously using it isn't like i

19:52

mean to me it's like a novel technique you know using and

19:55

it's been around for longer than we think because uh yeah

19:58

so we think it's just a couple of years but as you say you

20:00

know you've been since 2017 yeah within

20:04

with notes and i'm sure also it's been prior to

20:07

that yeah use but yeah i mean it's it certainly attracts a lot of attention

20:12

as well doesn't it in terms of you know both positive and i'm sure i don't know

20:15

about negative but yeah but um so how how does how do you handle that in terms

20:20

of um sort of the attention it gets from maybe you know the mainstream media and elsewhere.

20:26

Yeah, it's been brilliant, actually. It's really helped. Obviously,

20:30

newts have been persecuted quite a lot within the media for slowing down development.

20:34

Ed Sheeran couldn't build his chapel because there was great crested newts on his land.

20:39

Boris Johnson, obviously, called them an economic strain or something red-taped.

20:46

Yeah, it was nice in that same piece where Boris was basically slamming great crested newts.

20:51

They actually focused on Wessex water and how we've actually deployed this novel

20:55

technique to use dogs to obviously help with moving the good crystal newts out

21:00

of the way i think it's a really nice kind of middle ground.

21:02

Technique as well whereas it's really fast and

21:05

effective efficient for the developer so we can get

21:08

on with it really quickly but it's also really welfare wise it's

21:11

great for the newts because we're actually using a method that's really effective

21:14

and getting them out of the way and not relying on tools

21:17

that are really constrained by season time temperature literature everything

21:20

like that it's yeah the technique's really

21:23

fantastic but yeah we've had the wall street journal out

21:26

with us last year after my paper got released

21:29

there was a big boom of the media interest and yeah

21:33

the wall street journal contacted me and said oh can we

21:35

come out into the field with you and i was like oh this is definitely like you

21:39

know is this actually going to happen and i was like yeah sure and they're like

21:43

all right we'll be there tomorrow we'll get a train and it was your local train

21:46

station and you could pick us up so I was like oh god right so yeah they came

21:50

out into the field and on a little job that we had down the road and,

21:54

Yeah, we ended up finding a great person doing that. So that was really nice for them to see.

21:58

And it was quite funny, just Freya dove into a bush and I had to go in after her.

22:03

And this journalist was, I was trying to get him to come in with me to show

22:07

him what Freya was indicating on. And he was trying to climb in his really fancy London attire with his notepad

22:14

trying to climb through this dense bush to see what Freya was indicating on. It was hilarious.

22:21

Did he get in? Sorry? sorry did he

22:24

get into the bush did he was yeah he was yeah yeah reluctantly

22:27

he didn't really want to

22:30

yeah but it's it's nice to see then

22:33

raise the profile and we've had on jobs at wessex

22:36

as well engineers going on we do get great

22:39

question needs and we can have the the dogs out so a real positive

22:42

spin on it all and yeah lots of people wanting

22:45

to come out and see and and just explaining a bit

22:48

more about you know great question needs and how good they are

22:50

for the environment and everything like and people actually seeing

22:53

them and caring a bit more about about them and

22:56

and knowing that obviously we have methods that we can help them

22:59

get onto site a lot faster and stuff so

23:02

and everyone loves dogs as well most people love dogs unless you're a cat yeah

23:07

so i think it's a win-win it's it's a fantastic yeah yeah no absolutely i mean

23:18

i know I'm beginning to see the light, as I say.

23:21

But in terms of, I keep mentioning that in terms of, but from the utilisation

23:28

of dogs in detection work, you know, I mean, obviously it's not just great because

23:32

you can use it to other species and other areas of work as well.

23:35

But in terms of, I suppose, expansion of this, can you see that there's going

23:41

to be a greater use of maybe using detection dogs in conservation work in general?

23:46

Yeah, definitely. My trainer, Louise Wilson, she's doing a whole host of species

23:52

detection and she's actually collaborating with the Worldwide Crime Unit as well.

23:56

So helping hen harrier poaching, the dogs trying to detect the hen harriers

24:01

and yeah, there's a whole host of stuff.

24:04

She's at waterfall detection, you know, if you're ever trying to look on the

24:08

banks for waterfalls using visual cues, it's really difficult.

24:11

Caught whereas the dogs can cover that ground so quickly and a

24:14

lot easier and yeah it'd be nice in the

24:17

future for me to do something that isn't live animal that's moving and

24:20

lives underground because it's such a hard odor to obviously

24:23

train the training takes a couple of years to actually

24:26

be good at before you know you really get into the

24:29

swing of it and you've really got to understand so much about the

24:32

dog behavior any slight changes in behavior you really have

24:35

to pick up on you kind of push that dog into certain areas

24:38

it's not an easy as much as i'm promoting it's not

24:40

an easy you have to be a really good you know

24:43

handler really dedicated handler and also think about

24:46

your dog welfare animal welfare you know wildlife welfare

24:50

everything you've got to think about offshore they're doing

24:53

it you have to multitask all the time yeah it's a very stressful job i've got

24:56

so many gray hairs from doing it the last seven years so it's yeah it's not

25:02

not easy but it's definitely worthwhile and yeah learning a lot well that's

25:08

it because you mentioned about I mean, we talk about, obviously,

25:11

you know, every technique has its advantages and disadvantages.

25:15

And, you know, you've broadly touched upon the sort of, I say disadvantages,

25:19

but areas to be aware of in terms of using this as a survey technique.

25:25

So, obviously, it's not just about that.

25:30

The dog, as you mentioned, is also about the handler. So I imagine that,

25:34

you know, if I went out and got a puppy, trained it up, maybe not using current powder. Yeah.

25:40

You know, I mean, can anyone set themselves up as a detection dog handler?

25:47

No. So it's not for the faint-hearted.

25:52

It requires a lot of financial commitment, time commitment.

25:56

Commitment yeah you've got to be out in the dark

26:00

and when it's raining at night you've got

26:02

to be out in the day as well and it's just yeah

26:06

like I say picking up on very slight changes to the dog

26:08

behavior and also switching off your ecology brain which I really struggled

26:12

with initially because obviously as ecologists we were looking at everything

26:15

really interested in everything going on and and I also love toads and Freya

26:19

started to pick up on that fact that I like toads so she she started to linger

26:23

a bit more around toads when we've been out doing translocation schemes.

26:26

So I've really had to shut off that emotion and yeah, basically take a note

26:31

where she's kind of lingered and then get her to carry on the search and then

26:33

put her away, go back and then get these, rescue these toads as well.

26:38

So it's been really interesting.

26:41

You've really got to obviously shut your ecology mind off and become the dog

26:46

handler and then trying to balance that as well with also being an ecologist on site, doing e-cow.

26:51

So you've got all your construction people watching as well

26:54

so the other day i literally turned up to a

26:56

site to do some precautionary searches and there

27:00

was about 15 site guys watching and then

27:03

guys are strippers as well i'll get ready to obviously swim the area down once

27:07

we've done the thorough search and it's just making sure that you're not distracted

27:11

by any of that you're really focused work focused on the dog make sure the dog's

27:16

in a good coverage of that that area and you're confident that,

27:19

you know, it's slightly absent, that there's going to be needs in that area before they come in and.

27:24

And impact it yeah so it's a lot of

27:26

pressure so much pressure on it so yeah

27:29

you just gotta be really resilient and that respects and

27:32

that's taking a bit of time just to get used to the

27:35

amount of attention that we get with doing this

27:38

type of work yeah yeah i

27:41

can certainly see that people just get a lot of attention as you

27:44

say i mean because you see it's you know if it's one of

27:47

those things you know will it work won't it work you

27:50

know so i'm from a from a bystander's point

27:53

of view you know you just want to see how they you know how how effective a

27:58

technique is imagine but um it's i suppose looking at the licensing system sorry

28:04

to take it back slightly to the system itself now obviously we are where we

28:09

are at the moment in time in terms of the,

28:13

requirements what you need to you know the application and demonstrating the

28:18

you know know, efficacy of the survey technique itself, and also the length

28:22

of period between, I suppose, submission of a license application and then return.

28:27

So looking at it from a, I suppose, a client's point of view, what benefits.

28:34

Are there and also what improvements maybe could we be looking at,

28:39

I mean, obviously not ourselves, but that may be Natural England or the other licensing bodies.

28:45

Consider when it's looking at you know improving i suppose some delivery time

28:50

really yeah that's what's good really good with the liquor stuff because it's

28:54

just a two-week registration process, and it tends to go through really smoothly some

28:59

more sort of liquor would be great to roll out but obviously

29:03

i don't think naturally they're looking into that at the

29:05

moment whereas your yeah your epsl that

29:09

takes it depends really sometimes it's

29:13

gone through quite quickly and taking 30 days I

29:16

think the one we did last year that that went through and considering we

29:18

were obviously using the dogs and we were proposing to

29:22

reduce the time I thought it might take a little while to get that application

29:25

back but I think because I work really closely with natural England in the past

29:29

and they know how much training things like that that I've done so it kind of

29:33

it went through relatively smoothly and quickly well I'd say the 30 day period,

29:39

yeah but it can sometimes drag

29:43

a bit and depending on who's looking at the license application yeah

29:48

so i guess a bit more streamlined would

29:51

be great and yeah yeah

29:55

just trying to reduce delays i guess especially when we're trying to improve

29:59

our infrastructure you know like our pipelines that are bursting and things

30:03

like that be great to have yeah a bit more quicker could kind of turn around

30:07

for urgent work schemes that could potentially have environmental impacts.

30:13

So that's interesting then to say that, I mean, I suppose it's one way,

30:17

I suppose it can be quite logical in terms of delays and also in terms of obviously knowing the,

30:25

the license the applicant should we say that you know the

30:28

licensee you know the nominated ecologist named

30:31

ecologist there obviously that can help

30:34

so so therefore experience and so they've got

30:37

an understanding that yet this person is

30:40

a competent person and yeah they always getting provide

30:43

you know good information so so in one

30:46

way it is reliant partially on that

30:50

relationship building between maybe you know that

30:53

slow i mean whether whether it is a direct or indirect relationship between

30:56

natural england or actually the licensing team

31:01

an individual within licensing team yeah yeah and then it would be that yeah

31:06

depends who picks it up as someone who might not be very experienced and may

31:11

not know what i've done previously yeah they might not understand And yeah,

31:17

we're kind of, yeah, what I've done.

31:19

So they're saying, well, this person's got a dog and they're saying that they

31:22

want to do this. And they'll be like, oh, and then kind of delay it,

31:25

put it to the back of the pile out of there. And yeah, but I think it's more joined up than what it used to be.

31:31

And yeah, I think it feels like it's more of a joined up approach.

31:35

I deal with a lot with Matt Gill from Natural England.

31:39

And he's been brilliant with obviously the detection dog side of things.

31:44

Things and he primarily deals with that detection dog element now. Yeah.

31:48

So I've got other associates in other companies that are doing,

31:53

you know, great christening detection and it's actually,

31:55

we're, you know, we're asked the same sort of stuff now, whereas I think previously

31:59

when I got into it, I dealt with one person from Natchling and she was asked,

32:03

they were asking for a lot of stuff originally and this other company wasn't,

32:08

so it was not very kind of joined up.

32:11

Yeah so it's great that that's it's kind of developed

32:14

a more of a yeah standard kind of approach

32:17

and obviously with the guidelines that i can't remember

32:20

if i've mentioned that we've produced some guidelines as well

32:23

for those looking at getting into great question mute detection so

32:27

if you're trying to apply for a license i would have killed for this right at

32:29

the beginning it basically gives you all the information

32:32

that you need in order to yeah apply for that

32:35

license keep nudes in captivity to do

32:38

great question mute detection so i'm kind of taking you through

32:40

that and it's the advisors for the use of detection dogs

32:43

for conservation it's on that website and it's

32:46

myself and obviously louise um dr robert

32:49

yell rachel flavell from ports of

32:52

conservation aaron klein as well from ports of conservation luke gorman from

32:57

atkins so they've been a big procurer in the use of detection dogs as well they've

33:01

been yeah real advocate for the uses and yeah and cat stanhope as well from

33:07

atkins so yeah it was a really nice document that we were able to to produce the governing bodies.

33:12

We had NatureScot review, but we had Art Trust review, we had Natural Environment

33:15

review. Fortunately, we didn't hear back from NRW.

33:19

Yeah, which was a shame. Yeah, but we had really fantastic feedback from the other bodies.

33:24

So where's that document again? I mean, if you could provide me with the link,

33:28

I'll put it into the show notes as well. But what was the website again?

33:33

It's Advisors for the Use of Detection Dogs for Conservation. It's ADDC.

33:38

ADDC, okay. I suppose we're coming towards the end of our conversation. You've been very

33:45

generous with your time, so thank you. Early on in the morning as well, first thing.

33:50

In terms of, I mean, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn profile here,

33:55

and obviously you mentioned here about new detection dog shadowing consultation opportunities.

34:02

So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you said it's been your third year running.

34:07

So what's what's the aim behind this

34:10

then this is just it's an opportunity for people

34:13

to actually come out with me in the field and basically see

34:16

the dogs work and see the dogs locate great crescent newts

34:19

in the wild above ground below ground yeah it's just

34:22

i also would have killed for this when i got into

34:25

it just to actually see what's required and instead

34:28

of you know it's just instead of having that whole investment

34:31

into it without actually knowing exactly what what is

34:34

required it's a fantastic way to actually see the

34:37

dogs work the type of dogs that you need yeah the

34:40

type of you know non-invasive indications that they give and

34:43

we can be out always we can talk about everything as well during

34:46

a biosecurity obviously welfare rotation of the

34:49

dogs great crescent new ecology licensing like everything

34:53

we cover and i've had people over from austria she

34:56

later came over with vivier and the czech republic as well so they were doing

35:00

crescent new detection over there so yeah it's been really good i've got a lady

35:04

coming over from australia this year in may she come out with shadow me which

35:08

is crazy yeah but yeah it's really really fascinating it's a fantastic way to

35:13

and it's a one-to-one kind of session as well so yeah.

35:16

Yeah and they can have a little go handling and obviously my

35:18

supervision can get a feel for for it

35:21

see whether it is something that they want to invest in a very

35:24

honest person in terms of like time yeah every

35:28

aspect of investment that you have to give just see

35:31

whether you really want to get into it because it is a lot it's

35:34

a big long journey from the start to obviously getting out

35:37

there operationally and the learning never ends even

35:40

when you're out there operation still still learning now and I

35:42

will forever be learning so yeah it's

35:47

continued learning isn't it so yeah I mean I mean by the time this podcast goes

35:51

out I'm sure you would have filled up all your spaces there but is this something

35:56

that you run I mean I said it's a third year running but you know I mean I'm

36:00

looking for 2025 I mean is this probably look I mean don't say you know fully.

36:06

But imagine it's something you may be looking at repeating again maybe next

36:10

year yeah yeah Yeah, definitely. And usually I'd stop sort of May time, because that's when my trials will commence.

36:15

So I get really busy up until sort of September, October, and then it dies off a bit.

36:20

So then I offer another kind of autumn session as well before they go into brumation.

36:25

So yeah, it's a nice kind of, yeah, either end really.

36:29

So if you are interested, I'm the back end of this year as well,

36:33

before the winter kind of hits again.

36:35

So yeah, and And 2025, I hope they'll be, depending on where I am and what we're

36:40

doing at Wessex, because they're looking at expanding the dog facilities at Wessex.

36:45

So I might be a bit busy next year. I'm not sure yet.

36:49

Well, I can see that. I mean, again, it seems like, I mean, globally,

36:55

you've given a lot of presentations, you know, I'm sure, you know,

36:58

video conferencing as well, you know, on that aspect.

37:01

But also within, you know, obviously within the UK, it's the, is it Reptile?

37:06

You know is it the uh reptile amphibian yeah the workers

37:09

meeting yeah workers meeting yeah it was it was so it was lovely jim foster

37:14

the actress directors he actually invited me to the gibbet which was so lovely

37:20

his i just think i think back in 2019 when i went to the one at the workers

37:23

meeting that's when i met robert i think the the use of dogs it was still not.

37:29

Considered at that point and obviously with all the research that i've done

37:33

the paper that produced used last year it's really got the attention of people

37:37

and really want to understand it a bit more and so I give a lot of the scientific

37:41

results that we've got and also operational findings so it's a really nice kind of,

37:48

yeah i can i can give both of those aspects it's not just

37:51

a controlled research trials it's also that operational things that

37:54

we've had and obviously i work operationally but

37:57

also i'm a researcher so it's a nice kind of combined aspect

38:00

but i'm also uh we've got a detection dog symposium at the world's herpsological

38:05

congress in august that's set up so we've got all detection reptiles to be in

38:10

detection the dog handlers come in come across the globe globe to basically

38:14

be in the symposium yeah which will be fantastic that's held in Borneo.

38:21

Yeah it'll be really really really lovely to

38:24

meet everyone and everyone that I admire in the field and

38:27

just really kind of talk about what they've learned yeah what

38:30

they can recommend and we can learn off each other and kind

38:33

of yeah move forward really it's all about sharing knowledge I think

38:36

and I think that's how this will grow is by sharing being able

38:39

to share knowledge and some people can can be a bit closed off sometimes

38:42

and not want to expose what you know

38:45

they're doing or how they're doing it i think in order

38:48

to we've got to think about obviously it's great question either we're.

38:50

Trying to protect here and for being the reptiles though

38:53

it's yeah and they're a massive decline so the more

38:56

we kind of share the more we understand about how good the dogs can be

38:59

the capabilities and the better for them

39:02

yeah conservation status and wow i

39:06

tell there's a lot going on there's a a lot there's a lot

39:09

that you know you you know you get subjected to and

39:12

uh you hear about and i think this this work is an amazing you

39:15

know it's i say it's something i think we're going to be hearing a lot more about

39:18

you know we have in the past few years but uh you know

39:21

i think it's going to be you know become more important in

39:24

terms of you know conservation work you know as i

39:27

say not just roots but um other species and you know

39:30

biodiversity restoration i'm sure

39:32

too too but um nikki it's been a

39:35

pleasure talking to you today i do apologize

39:38

we're cutting short in our time but uh it's it's we but i just wish you and

39:43

and freya and obi and yuki all the best for this forthcoming season but but

39:50

for now thank you for joining me on the ecology academy podcast probably thank

39:54

you for having me as well it's been really yeah it's been great talking to you.

39:58

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