Dogs in Backpacks Are Helping Rewild an Urban Nature Reserve in England

Some dogs in East Sussex are going to be able to update their resumes after they've taken on jobs working with a local urban nature reserve. The pups are helping with a rewilding program that folks are hoping will help reestablish native wildflowers in the Railway Land Wildlife Trust in Lewes, a town in England.

As such, dogs are donning backpacks filled with wildflower seeds and setting a course for some of the more barren parts of the reserve in the hopes that they will be able to more efficiently reestablish the local flora. The humans involved in this endeavor believe that it will be successful since once upon a time wildlife seeds were distributed by a different breed of canine.

Dogs wearing backpacks to spread seeds in an English nature reserve

Ouse Valley Climate Action has funded the Railway Land Wildlife Trust 's project, which aims to reseed the urban nature preserve by getting the dogs to do the work that wild wolves used to do. According to The Guardian , hundreds of years ago, wolves helped to disperse seeds throughout the U.K. countryside when the grass and wildflowers would get stuck in their fur. They would then deposit them during their travels, sometimes taking them miles before they would fall off and germinate in the ground.

Now, the Railway Land Wildlife Trust is hoping to replicate that process by recruiting dogs to wear special backpacks that have been loaded with a mix of seeds and sand as they cruise around the park. The reason why dogs are taking on the job instead of humans has a lot to do with a dog's natural tendency to walk into areas where people cannot go. Not only that, but it seems like dogs can just cover more ground, speeding up the process of seed distribution.

As explained by The Guardian , anyone with a dog walking by the area can participate. All they have to do is ask a staff member at the reserve for one of the dog backpacks. Each backpack is filled with seeds mixed with sand, and has holes to help the seeds and sand easily fall out of the bag.

Dogs have been used in rewilding programs before.

This isn't the first time that humans have turned their attention to our four-legged friends in times of trouble. Several years ago, three dogs were tasked with helping to rewild Chilean forests that had been ravaged by fire. Three Border Collies were trained to wear special backpacks that had been outfitted to release a collection of seeds stored inside of them as the dogs ran through the charred landscape. In fact, this project inspired Dylan Walker to bring the new project to Lewes, per The Guardian.

Apparently, these dogs are especially well suited to this type of work, because they not only have the endurance to run quickly over vast areas without tiring, but they also instinctively know to stay focused and not to get distracted by the wildlife that was also struggling to reestablish itself after the fires wiped nearly everything out.

Hopefully all the dogs helping to spread seeds, were successful in their seed disbursement. It sounds like it will take a few years for anyone to know for sure.