Factors affecting carcass detection at wind farms using dogs and human searchers

1. The use of detection dogs to effectively monitor bird and bat fatalities at wind farms is becoming increasingly popular. All studies to date agree that dogs outperform human searchers at finding bird and bat carcasses around wind turbines; however, it remains unclear how particular conditions during the search may influence carcass detection.

2. We investigate the effect of carcass size, habitat characteristics and weather conditions on carcass detection probability, for both dogs and humans, using data from the monitoring program of a wind farm in Spain.

3. A generalized linear model reveals a high performance of dogs (~80% detection probability), with no clear influence of any of the variables analysed. Humans, on the contrary, were markedly affected by the size of the carcass and to some extent, by the vegetation structure. Humans performed poorly at detecting small carcasses (~20% detection probability), more so in dense vegetation.

4. Synthesis and applications. Our res...