Taipei’s sniffer dogs help detect sick trees to improve urban safety

HOW CANINES KEEP THE CITY SAFE

Gentle and good-natured, Lucy is part of an elite team of sniffer dogs, specially selected and trained for the job.

When she gets a whiff of the scent of the disease, she sits next to the tree to indicate her find.

It takes at least two detection canines to confirm a diagnosis.

“Once one dog detects a positive tree, we will deploy a second dog to double-check. If both dogs sit down by the tree, then we can be quite certain that the tree is sick,” said Sung Fu-hua, director of the Taipei City government’s Floriculture Experiment Center.

There are about 200,000 trees across Taipei, and Lucy and her team can inspect around 8,000 trees per year.