LANSING – The Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians’ Natural Resources Department has been working to conserve the threatened wood turtle. Their top team member is Mooz, a 9-year-old labradoodle who has been helping his owner, Bill Parsons, find wood turtles for the past five years.
Parsons is an inland fish and wildlife program manager at the Natural Resources Department and has been researching turtles for over 30 years.
He first learned about using dogs to search for rare animals when he joined an agency that used canines to search for box turtles in 2019. After learning the training process, he realized his labradoodle met the criteria…