National Geographic grantee Karen DeMatteo is turning an age-old rivalry on its head, using dogs to help protect cats in the wild.
While several protected areas keep jaguars, pumas, ocelots, and very rarely seen bush dogs somewhat safe in Argentina, logging, poaching, and a network of highways through the parks still keep these animals under threat.
DeMatteo is training dogs to sniff out the droppings of these predators, then collecting the samples, testing their DNA, and building up a database of information on individual cats, their family relationships, and their behavior. Geographic information systems (GIS) will then be used to identify potential conflict zones and key habitat for protection. Her goal is to “expand our knowledge of how these species are moving through the landscape so we can determine locations for biological corridors/wildlife crossings that maximize animal movement and minimize human-wildlife conflict.”
Her team is now back in Argentina for the summer, working to fill in gaps in the data created by problems with time or weather in previous expeditions.
You can see Karen and her own dog at work using the same techniques to help North American mountain lions in this video courtesy of Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
