Sunday morning had just broken on the northern Tanzania savanna when the phone rang at the Manyara Ranch K-9 unit. Fidelis Olekashe, a security expert who manages the 35,000-acre ranch, had been asked to investigate a theft. Money had been stolen just hours earlier at a nearby safari camp while guests were out on a game-viewing drive. He was calling for back-up.

Olekashe, who previously served in the Tanzanian military, was recruited two years earlier by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to help curb poaching in this important wildlife corridor that connects two of Tanzania’s most iconic national parks, Tarangire and Manyara. But as the phone call illustrated, poaching is not the only variety of crime Olekashe fights. And quite often he enlists the ranch’s highly trained tracker dog teams to help him in this work. At his request, two dogs and their handlers were already on their way, escorted by uniformed rangers.

When they arrive, Olekashe and the handlers, Kayongo Kalasinga and Saitabau Londasat, immediately begin inspecting the camp—initially without the dogs. Amidst a confusing mosaic of tracks, they identify two sets of fresh footprints off the main trail that lead, suspiciously, to the narrow space between the two looted tents. Kalasinga pulls on rubber gloves and uses stainless steel tongs to place pieces of clean gauze over the prints. “We leave the gauze on for five minutes to absorb the person’s smell,” he says. “Then the gauze is presented to the dog to track or match the scent to an actual person.”

After a few minutes, one of the handlers leads a striking maroon-red Alsatian named Rosdaz, its nose to the ground, to the area between the tents and from there, to an open-air kitchen. Here, the handler directs five camp staff members and about 10 others, including me, to stand still as he presents the dog with one of the pieces of gauze. After a few sniffs, Rosdaz matches the scent to one of the staff members; the dog stands up on his hind legs and places his front paws firmly against the man’s waist. The man, dressed in a crisp, collared shirt, stands motionless and stares straight ahead, avoiding the gaze of his accuser.

Because Rosdaz is still young, the handlers decide they want a second opinion. Rocky is a more classic looking Alsatian with a sloping back and dusty grey coat. At 7 years old, he’s more experienced and bolder than Rosdaz. As one of Tanzania’s two original tracker dogs, Rocky has already made a name for himself. He and another dog, now based in the Serengeti National Park, once tracked a poachers’ trail for some 7 hours. Ultimately, the dogs led rangers to a hidden stash of ivory weighing 60 kilograms (130 pounds), representing tusks from at least a half dozen elephants (Loxodonta africana).

As we wait, Kalasinga directs us to form a circle and stand far enough apart so the breeze won’t blend our individual scents. Londasat appears with Rocky and hands his lead to Kalasinga. After being presented with the first piece of gauze, the dog makes his way around the circle and stops at the same man Rosdaz had identified. Instead of jumping up on the man, he simply sits beside him and barks. It’s a noisy signal compared to the passive cues that dogs trained to detect various types of contraband in public places give their handlers. But these are not detection dogs; they’re trackers, trained to pursue and to make noise when they locate their target.

Eventually, the scent on the other piece of gauze leads Rocky to a second man in the circle. Both of these staff members had arrived just the night before with the camp manager to provide “expertise” to the local staff. And while the positive identification only connects the men to the suspicious tracks, not necessarily the crime, the evidence seems sufficient for the camp manager to initiate a line of questioning, and to consider reporting the men to local law enforcement authorities.

This type of investigation, while not the team’s primary role, is an important demonstration of the dogs’ keen ability to track down individuals—from poachers to petty thieves—who have left even the slightest clue at the scene of their crime. The methods the dog team used here are the same as those used in the pursuit of some of Tanzania’s most lethal poachers. And in that high-stakes fight, there’s little time to lose.

Tanzania, which recently boasted the continent’s second largest elephant population after Botswana, lost more than 60 percent of its elephants to poaching between 2009 and 2014. Seeking effective low-tech solutions to the problem, rangers began considering using dogs to track down poachers in the bush.

The use of highly trained dogs like Rocky and Rosdaz was pioneered by the Tanzanian conservation organization Honeyguide. (The organization is named after a group of birds in the Indicatoridae family that are known to lead people to sources of wild honey.) Honeyguide first established a conservation tracker dog unit in 2011 in West Kilimanjaro and was one of only a few such programs in Africa.

With the dogs’ ability to follow a scent—sometimes days-old—from crime scenes over many miles to poachers’ camps or villages, and to match scents collected at a scene to individual suspects, the dogs have proven their value to the rangers. According to Olekashe, this can be measured in the relative prices poachers charge to work in various areas. The higher the risk, the more compensation is required. “From intelligence, we know that a shooter’s charge can now be as much as 5 million Tanzanian Shillings ($2,200) in areas where we operate. Elsewhere, it may be 500,000 ($223) or as little as 200,000 ($89).”

Poaching incidents in Manyara Ranch have fallen as well. In 2014 and 2015, poachers killed 17 elephants inside the ranch. This number fell to zero in 2016, although three elephants were speared on the outskirts of the ranch in retaliation for feeding on farmers’ crops. Thus far, 2017 has been quiet, with no elephants poached or speared. “These days, not only does an elephant die naturally, its tusks are left intact,” Olekashe says. “This would have never happened before.”

During a tracking exercise later that afternoon, the team works for about 30 minutes, passing over a wide variety of terrain, from burnt ground to tall grasses and thick bushes. Reimoga, one of the workers who feeds and helps look after the dogs, has hidden himself in one such patch of bushes. But it doesn’t take long for Jerry to follow his fresh tracks and sit under the bush below Reimoga. The dog indicates the hiding spot with directional head movements not unlike the way in which a bird dog might point out a covey of quail. Dog handler Emmanuel Isaack rewards the dog for his work with a bout of play with a rubber tug toy.

“I was fond of dogs before becoming a handler,” Isaack says. “Training improved my commitment to them. People were more accustomed to using dogs for hunting. Now we’re using dogs to stop hunting.”

Isaack recounts tracking meat poachers back to their camps with dog Jerry. To avoid detection, these poachers tend to make camp far from where they dry the bushmeat—often small antelope such as impala or dikdik. “Once we ambushed a group while they were cooking their evening meal and were completely oblivious that they had been tracked from the site of their snares.”

Poaching of wild animals with snares remains one of the greatest conservation challenges in the Serengeti, and a Serengeti-wide de-snaring program is now in operation. Isaack shows me his collection of dozens of wire snares, which will be destroyed at the park’s headquarters. Unlike in Manyara Ranch, where snares aren’t set for fear of injuring cattle, the greater Serengeti ecosystem is dense with snares. Almost daily, the veterinary technician Mbwambo removes these traps from the legs, necks, and trunks of wild animals. 

Grumeti has taken the dog-handler bond to a new level. With open slats in the walls between the dog kennels and the handlers’ sleeping quarters, the handlers will be able to hear their dogs throughout the night and know if they are in distress, Burden says. The grassy outdoor kennels are fed by rainwater, and the dogs will have canvas beds elevated above the floor. In addition, the kennel will have its own basic veterinary laboratory equipped with a centrifuge and a microscope to monitor dogs’ health.

As the number of tracking and detection dog programs continues to grow across Africa, a few key elements will be necessary to maximize the achievements of canine units: setting and maintaining standards and best practices, long-term donor support, and importantly, sharing knowledge and even resources.

“In conservation, we have limited resources,” says Damian Bell, Honeyguide’s executive director. “While dogs are expensive to maintain, they have proven effective at helping government and community ranger teams curb poaching and crime.” Bell estimates that it costs at least $30 thousand per year to maintain an established dog unit. The rationale is that if dogs are helping to keep the region’s protected areas, campsites, and communities safe, they are not only fostering positive attitudes toward conservation, but also helping secure a vital sector of Tanzania’s economy. Tourism is a mainstay in the country where the northern circuit—together with the islands of Zanzibar—generate some 90 percent of the country’s $1.3 billion in tourism earnings annually. These funds help subsidize Tanzania’s lesser-known and more remote national parks.

“We spread the word about the dogs through the people we train in crime-scene protection,” says Kirimbai, who was a member of Tanzania’s original anti-poaching unit established in 1978. “Sometimes this training—in how to leave a scene undisturbed so that the dogs can do their work—can be enough to deter illegal activities.” In other words, the people he trains become message multipliers. “There are no secrets in Tanzania,” he says.

Proof of this came during a recent bus ride, Kirimbai says. A head of anti-poaching efforts was coming for a meeting at Manyara Ranch and overheard another passenger say, in response to a comment about the area’s elephants and their valuable ivory, “The dogs will follow you to where you live. Don’t even think about poaching there.”