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Paws at the border: Dogs help stop invasive pests spread by air passengers

A new study by researchers at the University of Melbourne's Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA) highlights the biosecurity risks posed by air passengers and emphasizes the value of border interventions such as detector dogs in mitigating these threats.

in the journal NeoBiota, the study focused on domestic air travel into Tasmania, Australia, an island state with an especially low pest presence due to its geographic isolation.

Researchers utilized an extensive database of more than 66,000 biosecurity risk interceptions from over 6 million passengers entering Tasmania from mainland Australia. With this, they applied advanced statistical modeling tools to assess how effective different interventions are at catching risky materials at the border.

Air passengers pose a significant biosecurity risk, with pests potentially introduced via items like fruits, vegetables, and animal products carried in luggage.

To combat this risk, border interventions using biosecurity inspectors and detector dogs were found to be effective, both by encouraging voluntary declarations by passengers and detecting risk items that passengers failed to declare.

While biosecurity inspectors play a significant role, detector dogs were found to be especially effective, detecting a higher rate of risky items and targeting undeclared materials that might otherwise go unnoticed. The presence of detector dogs substantially increased interception rates, including for items linked to the spread of fruit fly.

Lead author Dr. Nicholas Moran said, "Dogs being great at sniffing things out might seem obvious, but measuring precisely how effective different interventions are, what they capture, and how, is incredibly valuable information for biosecurity operations.

"Fruit flies are a serious risk to Tasmania, and many parts of the world. So, this work is about knowing what biosecurity interventions to deploy, and where is best to deploy them to reduce the risk of outbreaks."

The study is a part of the "Risk Analysis of Tasmanian Border Inspection Approaches and Procedures" project, conducted by CEBRA with Biosecurity Tasmania. The two-phase project investigated the invasive risk of five pest species that are common across Australia's mainland but are not currently found in Tasmania.