The HALO Trust
Dogs & Rats
HALO has stopped using dogs across all of its programmes following years of intense evaluation into whether “dogs can consistently find mines?”.
It is our conclusion that dogs will consistently miss mines – not always due to the fault of the dog or handler, but more because the vital explosive vapour is sometimes simply not present for the dog to smell, however good the dog. With this known bogey factor, we cannot risk the lives of our staff, or the local community, in walking and driving in areas we suspect to have been mined and then searched by dogs. Some agencies deploy dogs to “area reduce” swathes of land that were not originally mined but fell under the big hand / small map survey. In these situations HALO considers it better simply to re-survey using trained survey staff, or consider other options far less expensive than deploying trained dogs – such as ploughing or rolling as a useful step towards agricultural rejuvenation.
Similarly with rats, it is generally understood that rats are less reliable and slower than any mechanical area reduction asset and it is difficult to determine which scent animals are tuned in on. The low detection threshold makes it difficult to measure detection capabilities for these animals. This coupled with the fact that each animal will behave differently in any given day and the impact that the weather conditions could have, may result in missed explosive items, which will affect the local communities post clearance. HALO has no plans to deploy rats as part of clearance operations.
