In the beginning

ScentConserve - Where did it start?

The intension was never to start a company, just to make a difference.

I have been working in wildlife, specifically seabird, rehabilitation for about 22 months at the time of writing this post. This job comes with ups and downs, like any other job out there, the difference being, you see birds suffer and die, no matter how hard you try and fix them.

In 2022, the seabird species of South Africa, was hit by yet another disaster threatening their populations, this time it was Avian Influenza (AI). This disease is around every year but the severity of it does not always impact our beautiful seabird species.

Working at a rehab Centre as one of the rehab staff, you see a lot of birds come in with this dreadful disease and the only thing you can do: stand in heartbreaking silence, because you know what happens next.....

Unfortunately, there is no cure for AI and birds showing these symptoms get euthanized in order to combat the spread to healthy birds, both in wild populations and in rehab centres. The only way to be 100% sure that the bird does suffer from the disease, is to do PCR testing. This involves taking tracheal and cloacal swabs that is kept in a transport medium until it reaches a lab for testing. The results can take between 3-7 days, depending on where and when the sample is sent. It also cost a lot of money to test these samples.

All of this leads to the immediate euthanasia of 'suspected' Avian Influenza Cases due to the expense and the fact that most rehabilitation centres do not have access to quarantine facilities, or enough staff to run the area. This, unfortunately, means that some birds get euthanized just to find out, 5 days later that it tested negative for AI.

So.... the moment... I was standing, looking down into a box with a penguin in. Cleary this bird was sick and 99% of the symptoms pointed to AI. But what about the 1%. What if this beautiful adult penguin did not have AI? This was probably the 10th bird that we had to euthanize in a 2 day time span. Lying in bed that night, I was emotionally drained having to hold so many birds to be euthanized, without a 100% certainty that this bird actually had the disease. The other problem with AI is that birds can be asymptomatic and this is exactly the reason why the rehab centre was dumped into quarantine for months. This left staff and volunteers physically, emotionally and mentally drained.

I started doing some research on alternative ways to test for AI and found research done by Dr. Glen Golden. He trained ferrets and then later dogs, to sniff out this disease in wild duck population, with great success.

The positives aspects of this: it is cost effective, it gives you an immediate result and it can be used with asymptomatic cases.

The negatives: in South Africa, there is no-one working on it, grants and funding is only paid to either organizations or researchers affiliated with universities. Not a lot of companies are willing to take on a project like this because it has not been done a lot. It is also intensive training and will only yield results a year or more later.

I was given some advise from people close to me to look into establishing an NPO. This way people can donate money to the cause and the possibility of getting funding from grants is higher.

And this leads us to where we are now, creating ScentConserve, training dogs, training myself and trying to make a difference.

My hope for the company is to grow and flourish into a legacy of conservation and change and to hopefully, with a lot of hard work and passion, make a lasting impact on our wildlife populations.

Michelle....