California to expand pest-detecting dog teams with $4 million in federal funding

California will soon see more dogs at postal delivery facilities, sniffing out potential pests in packages entering the state. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week plans to award over $15 million to California pest prevention, mitigation and research programs in a push to upgrade nationwide agricultural infrastructure.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture will be awarded $4 million of that funding to expand the state’s pest detector dog team. The team enlists a group of 12 dogs in nine counties to flag agricultural products — which can sometimes carry invasive or harmful pests — in packages arriving to the state. Florida and Hawaii have similar teams, which were also awarded funding by the USDA. 

Each dog on the team was rescued and placed with a handler before heading to a 10-week long training at the USDA National Detector Dog Training Center in Georgia, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. 

Once they’ve been trained, dogs are brought to UPS, FedEx, OnTrac and other private parcel carriers across the state to sniff out packages with agricultural goods inside, like fruit, vegetables, plants and even soil. When the dog alerts, trained biologists then inspect the contents of the package for potential plant pests like fruit flies or fungi. 

“The dogs are trained to find the first odor on the floor, like this,” said Lisa Sampson, an agricultural biologist and canine handler with Alameda County, pointing to a piece of contraband fruit. "It’s a very simple problem for them." 

Samspon and her dog, Zenna, were in Stockton last week giving a demonstration with USDA Undersecretary Jenny Moffitt. After sniffing several boxes on the floor, Zenna indicated she had found something by scratching. 

“That’s how I know it’s real, our dog has to scratch three times,” Sampson said. When she opened the box Zenna chose, the piece of fruit was inside.  

Funding for the state’s dog team comes as a part of a larger push from the USDA to upgrade agricultural pest control infrastructure. Last week, the department announced it is awarding over $70 million in funding toward 350 projects nationwide under the Plant Protection Act. 

“These funds provide state governments, universities, tribal organizations and other essential cooperators across the nation the tools they need to protect U.S. agriculture, natural resources, and food security,” Moffitt said. “These projects also advance science in the fight against invasive plant pests and diseases and expand export opportunities for American growers,”

Over $15 million of the USDA Plant Protection Act funding will go toward other programs in California, including emergency plant health response teams, surveys of stone fruit orchards and nurseries. 

Funding will also go toward surveying populations of spotted lanternflies and exotic fruit flies, two pests that can cause extreme damage to affected agriculture. Neither of the pests have become established in California, but have increased in population across the country in recent months.