Daisy, Sugar, and Kip are offering the last hope to saving a "dragon" thought to have been extinct. Video via AAP.
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00:00So since the grassland eilis dragon was discovered at the start of 2023,
00:04the wildlife detection dog team have been involved in training two dogs initially to see if we can
00:11teach them to identify the smell of a Victorian grassland eilis dragon and see if we can help
00:16survey for this species in the wild. We've had at least 10 wild dragons that were unknown that
00:24the dogs have found during surveys with their handlers and that's super exciting because it
00:27shows that the training and the hard work and the long months of being out here and all kinds of
00:32weather have paid off and we're starting to see two of the dogs now are able to continue on and
00:38do surveys in unknown or uncharted landscapes I suppose. We've incorporated training another two
00:45dogs so Finn and Sugar into our team and we're going to continue to survey for the Victorian
00:51grassland eilis dragons beyond the rediscovery property into areas where they might be persisting
00:56in this broader area. The second part which we're also really excited about is working on some other
01:02grassland eilis dragon species those that exist in Canberra, Monaro and potentially in Bathurst they
01:09haven't been seen for quite a long time as well. We're going to hopefully see if our dogs can generalize
01:14their learning from the Victorian species to those other species without any training at all.