Sumatran rhinos — hairy and noisy — were thought to have gone extinct from southern Sumatra for years. Then came the dogs. Recently, dogs with Working Dogs for Conservation have discovered what are believed to be several heaps of Sumatran rhino dung in Way Kambas National Park, located in the southern part of the Indonesian island. The scat has undergone one test to confirm it was deposited by a Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis); two tests remain until the Indonesian government is certain. Still, conservationists are cautiously optimistic. Nina Fascione, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation (IRF), says she would have bet her paycheck that there were no rhinos left in Way Kambas. “You can’t prove a negative,” she says, but she advocated for the dogs to prove that no more resources should be used in the park for rhinos. They’d tried everything to locate any remaining rhinos in Way Kambas, she says: the government, the local NGO YABI, and IRF had deployed rangers searching for rhinos, camera traps and drones for years — nothing. “[So], let’s get dogs in there. We’ll say we’ve tried everything,” Fascione says. After years of searching, it took the dogs, named Yagi and Quinn, just two days to find the scat. “I was nothing short of thrilled,” says Pete Coppolillo, executive director of Working Dogs for Conservation. “With fewer than 50 [Sumatran rhinos] in the entire global population, even a single individual is a big deal.” Coppolillo says the dogs are trained for three…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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