Four-legged support

• In 2017, as part of a joint project with the Tour du Valat Research Station, the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier and the Coussouls de Crau National Nature Reserve, two dogs from the Canine Conservation (University of Washington, USA) were trained to search for the Crau Plain Grasshopper in order to increase the detection rate. The first tests, with two dog handlers Heath Smith (USA) and Rita Santos (European Division) in Crau in 2017, gave promising initial results.
• In 2018 and 2019, the experiment continued in the coussoul with Rita Santos and her dog Hera.
• This year, they are back in the Nature Reserve, looking for new sites likely to shelter a few individuals of the Crau Plain Grasshopper.

The results in the field are impressive. The collaboration and communication between dog handler and dog is obvious: after a few days of training, Hera is able to find a Crau Plain Grasshopper and has already contributed to new and interesting discoveries in the first week.

After four weeks in the Crau, the Conservatoire d’Espaces Naturels de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur commissioned Rita and Hera to search for populations of the French Stone Grasshopper on sites in the Sainte-Victoire National Nature Reserve, where it had not been found for several years.