Poa, the English springer spaniel on a mission to sniff out Koalas in Lake Macquarie. 29th July 2025 | Newcastle Herald - video Dailymotion

Newcastle Herald

Meet Poa, the English springer spaniel on a mission to sniff out Koalas in Lake Macquarie. Poa plays a crucial role in surveying potential koala habitats, helping locate and map populations of this iconic marsupial.

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00:00yeah so we're working here with Lake Macquarie Council doing koala detection dog surveys so

00:11basically we're filling gaps in data deficiency in terms of presence and absence of koala and

00:16also updating habitat mapping so we'll be doing a botany survey at the same time as the koala

00:21at the beginning we cue the dog to find the koala and she'll go out and search we're

00:29doing a 200 meter by 50 meter transect so one hectare search area and she's trained to find the

00:37odor and lie down with the odor basically between her paws and to put her nose on the odor to show

00:44us where it is and they'll find scats that are under the leaf litter that you wouldn't see at all

00:54and it sometimes takes us ages to actually confirm the scat so that we are able to

00:59reward them it's pretty amazing just that relationship and that human bond with dogs

01:04it's so strong so when it's working well it feels incredible

Poa, the English springer spaniel on a mission to sniff out Koalas in Lake Macquarie. 29th July 2025 | Newcastle Herald

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