A conservation detection dog is one of the important tools being used in the search for injured koalas from bushfires on the New South Wales Mid North Coast.

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Taylor is a four-year-old English springer spaniel, that has been in training since eight weeks of age. "Every time she smelt koala poo or koala fur, she'd get her favourite reward which, as a puppy, was a tennis ball and treats," trainer Ryan Tate said. "What we essentially train the dog to do is enjoy that love for sniffing the environment but to discriminate a particular smell so every day out in the field for her is the best day of her life." At four, Taylor is becoming an old hand.

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"She just loves smelling things," Mr Tate said. "But if she smells koala poo or a live koala that's the icing on the cake. "She knows when she smells that she gets told by a million people she's fantastic and she gets a tennis ball. "Her breed has been bred for hundreds of years to use their nose, to find small animals traditionally for hunters, but we sort of reverse that role now and use them for conservation purposes. "Sometimes she'll just sit right beneath the live animal if there's not too much wind. "Other times she'll help us find the koala by identifying the freshest scats and then we call in the brilliant volunteers at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital who are expert koala spotters." Mr Tate has been an animal trainer all his life, but got into conservation detection dogs through his former work as a penguin trainer. "I met Steve Austin who is a very famous and well established veteran dog trainer about 15 years ago," he said. "I was actually working with penguins and Steve was training dogs to find penguins. "He and I hit it off and I did a number of different courses with him and his wife and one thing led to another. "I dabbled in work with explosives dogs, drug detection dogs, and truffle-sniffing dogs about four years ago I got asked to be part of a program with National Parks and I thought it might just be a summer fling but I've never looked back — that's my full-time gig now." 'Hardcore conservationists' Mr Tate has just become a father again but the early arrival of twins was in the middle of the bushfires. "At one stage my wife and the twins were stuck at the hospital and we were stuck at home and unable to get to them, so it's been an extremely busy time of year for us," he said.

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"But my wife and I are both hardcore conservationists and as soon as we saw what was happening around here we knew we had to dedicate and donate our skills and time to helping find what remaining koalas are here. "So ever since the fires ripped through the Lake Innes area we've been on standby and we've gone in there on four occasions now and Taylor has been successful in locating eight koalas." Port Macquarie Koala Hospital President Sue Ashton said Mr Tate, who is now a member of the hospital, offered his and Taylor's services to help them in a search-and-rescue program. "We never imagined that we would be using her in these fires, but it's just working so well," Ms Ashton said. "Taylor's very speedy and very dedicated and covers a lot more area much faster than we do so it's been a great asset." PHOTO: Pappinbarra Peter is being cared for at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. (ABC Mid North Coast: Luisa Rubbo) The Koala Hospital has had teams going out to the bushfire zones every day searching for burnt koalas and healthy koalas as well. More than 30 koalas are being treated for burns at the hospital. "What we're doing is treating their little paws and their noses and anywhere else that's burned," Ms Ashton said. Two-pronged goals The hospital's GoFund Me campaign has already raised more than $1.8 million dollars. That money will go towards more than 100 water stations for the Port Macquarie area where bushfires have devastated core koala habitat. "We're working with NSW Forestry Corporation and National Parks to map the areas they need to go in to and we've also got a vehicle that we're going to use to top up these water stations as needed," Ms Ashton said. "We're also getting some manufactured for our wildlife colleagues up in the Northern Rivers where they've been devastated by fire and also for wildlife organisations down south of us in Taree." Cameras will also be installed to see what wildlife come to those water stations and how they help the wildlife population. The Koala Hospital is also hoping to start the first wild koala breeding program in the world to try to rebuild the koala population. It will probably be somewhere in Port Macquarie.

"It's now brought that goal forward and we're going to be focussing on that in the New Year." The Koala Hospital will first have to find the land for the breeding program and then build infrastructure. "There will be roads, there'll be fencing, there will be water and feeding stations, and there'll also be probably a clinic and a laboratory attached to it because we want to do this really well," Ms Ashton said. "We are going to be working with a number of government departments and a lot of wildlife vets to make sure we use best practice, and then we get to share that knowledge with other organisations." Please 'SHARE' to pass on this story to a friend or family member

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