Meet the dog who seeks out stoats

Stoats are not native to Orkney but since they were first spotted there in 2010 they have wreaked havoc, eating a third of their bodyweight in rare native birds and voles every single day.

The Orkney Native Wildlife Project is an ambitious initiative that has been working to remove stoats from the county since 2017, using detection dogs like Thorn to search for signs of stoats which have avoided the traps.

About 3,500 stoats have been caught so far and efforts to bring in new specialist tracker dogs are already under way.

It is hoped that more and more areas of Orkney will be declared officially stoat-free until finally every last one of the invasive predators is gone.