When he began working at Mugie Conservancy as a shepherd in 1998, Joshua Lelegwi didn’t know that he would one day be part of the Bravo Five team, the special branch of rangers and five dogs tasked with protecting the conservancy and the community around.

“Being a shepherd trained me to be keen on checking for footprints and have the heart to protect the animals. When I was taken in, I began working on the wires and taking care of the fences before graduating to handling the dogs,” he starts.

Powerful senses

Advanced technology such as tracking, drone surveillance, sensing systems has always been the go-to ways of nabbing wildlife offenders and illegal wildlife trade. However, more conservancies such as Mugie are relying on one of the oldest, most reliable, low-tech, tried and true methods for their anti-poaching and anti-trafficking work: detection dogs.

Once used by hunters to follow wild deer and boar, breeds such as bloodhounds have been used since the Middle Ages to track humans. In conservation, their powerful senses of smell have been crucial in detecting everything from rhino dust, ivory jewellery and other illegal wildlife products. The bloodhounds at Mugie, Emma, Caescer, Ishmael and Bhutto, were introduced in the conservancy from Ol Jogi in 2002 to protect rhinos from poachers.

 “When we brought them, there were a lot of poachers in the area targeting rhino’s horns. The dogs assisted us as we were able to get guns and poachers,” says Lelegwi.

Although in 2012, Kenya Wildlife Service relocated the rhinos at Mugie, the dogs continued to sniff out poachers even during the pandemic. They also picked up another role: assisting the community catch thieves.

They would sniff out illegal items in buses and homes. If a person’s items have been stolen, we get in the house and check it out and we look for the footprints or anything the thief might have dropped,” explains Lelegwi.

The same situation applies at Olpejeta whose Dog Management Unit began in 2011. There was no poaching reported at the conservancy, but there were increased cases of a house break-in, theft of grass and sexual assault in the region.  The dogs assisted in busting the culprits.

“ Left to the community, the suspected thieves would kill the rapist with pangas and machetes. It’s our work to ensure that the killer is safe as the community gets angry until we get them to the police,” says Paul Litereson, the Head of the dog management unit at Olpejeta.

Daily routine

Every morning at 9 am, the dogs are removed from their kennels to bask in the sun while their kennels are washed. Thereafter, they undergo training exercises to ensure they are fit and their detecting skills are sharpened. The session starts with the dogs fitted with a harness and a lead tracking rope, which alerts them that work is about to start.

“We start training them on tracking scents from as young as three months old with raw sausages. One of us holds the dog while the other places the scent of the sausage onto his nostril to register the scent in his mind. I do this as I move away from him sometimes running behind the trees until he finds the sausages. The stretch can go up to 20 or even 30 metres,” says Lelegwi.

“When you walk, you spit, you sweat and everything goes to the grass. The dog’s ears assist in sensing the smell, by gathering the scent towards the nose. Even its tongue can smell. The skin too doesn’t cling to surfaces making it easier for the dog to run faster during operations,” explains John Tongoria, another ranger in charge of the dogs.

Bonding session

The training goes on till the dog is six months old and after that, he is good to go. These sessions are also bonding opportunities with their dedicated handler as they never go on a mission without each other. For the rangers, it takes three months of tough training at Ol Jogi to understand how to handle the dogs and learn more about poaching.

 “It was tough at first, but we have become pros and are confident we can train a puppy when it comes,” he adds.

At 4 pm, the dogs relax and two hours later have their evening meal. However, whenever there is a distress call from one of the villagers, the human and dog rangers head out and sort the issue.

“Capturing of the thief depends on whether they are around the vicinity or not,” says Tongoria. “Sometimes we can go up to six kilometres, with the police behind us, chasing after the thieves. We usually walk in two pairs of dogs with two rangers. When one is tired, the other assists in tracking criminals,” he adds. Having rangers at the forefront makes the work dangerous.

 “Just recently, we were almost shot by robbers; luckily, we escaped unharmed. Sometimes they use motorbikes, and even though we have cars, it’s hard to reach them even if we have identified them since while on operation, we are on foot because of the dogs,” adds Lelegwi.

With many requests coming in, another challenge is that they are also short staffed both the dogs and rangers. Caescer is two years old and is the most active one while Ishmael and Bhutto are old. Emma, unfortunately, passed away recently of cancer.

“We want to add another dog so that they are three and we can split when we have a lot of cases. When we are two, we follow up on just one case or alternate when we are tired” says Lelegwi.