Meet the dog sniffing down scat on Queensland's Fraser Coast, all in the name of koala research and preservation. It's a crap job but Maya loves to do it.

Maya, the koala poo detection dog is currently on the Fraser Coast with her owner, Dr Romane Cristescu, a researcher from the University of the Sunshine Coast.

The pair are travelling around the region sniffing out locations, confirming where koalas are, how healthy they are, and if they need our help.

Dr Cristescu uses Maya the border collie to sniff out stashes of koala scat for her studies.

"No one thinks poo is of great interest. As an ecologist poo is actually the most interesting thing," Dr Cristescu said.

"When you get the fresh poo, you can determine a lot of things. You can determine the diet, what the koala has eaten, the gut bacteria ... you can determine their genetics."

The hope was that by looking at where koalas live on the Fraser Coast and how healthy they were, conservation efforts in the future would be more targeted.

"We really need to know how they are going to know what we need to do to help if [the koalas] need help," Dr Cristescu said.

"We are obviously interested in the distribution of the koalas and where there are really strong pockets.

"But we also want to know how they're doing. Are they having a lot of problem with disease? Have they low genetic diversity, which can really be problematic, or are they breeding really well?

"Those are factors that are going to influence the survival of the koala in the long term."

Maya the poo sniffing dog

Maya was rescued from an animal shelter four years ago to be trained up for the dirty job.

"We train dogs that are abandoned because they're not wanted as pets. We rescue them and give them a goal in their life; our first dog is Maya," she said.

"She is trained at sniffing out the poo in the environment. Then, when she has found it, she indicates and she gets a tennis ball as a reward and that makes my job much easier.

"She can actually smell it from very far away and show me where they are."

Working in places like national parks and wildlife areas, it was also important for the dog not to get distracted by the possibility of chasing some native wildlife.

Dr Cristescu said Maya was the perfect dog for the job as she was very reward-oriented and had a kind nature.

"Because we are working in national parks we really need a very soft dog that is not going to pose any threat to wildlife, not going to bark, chase, or stress animals in the environment," she said.

"There was a bit of training there but she was really good from the start to be honest.

"She has such a beautiful nature, really soft and loving, and didn't show any interest in chasing any wildlife."