By Emma Mortiboy | Public Fundraising Officer
Our HeroDOGs’ work has continued despite the pandemic, as lives literally depend on our demining activities. The APOPO team use our HeroDOGs as technical survey dogs (TSDs), which means that they can quickly cover terrain without the need for brush removal to detect explosives.
At the end of last year, APOPO tested the HeroDOGs' ability to detect cluster munitions in East Cambodia. These explosive remnants of the Vietnam War continue to kill and maim members of rural communities living in the country, and importantly our HeroDOGs are proving excellent at detecting these items. In total this year alone, our HeroDOGs have found and helped remove 183 cluster munitions!
Cluster munitions are different from landmines, but no less deadly. The weapon is made up of a container that opens and spreads explosive submunitions and shrapnel, causing harm across a wide area. Such weapons buried in the ground deter land development and make farming extremely dangerous, even decades after the device was planted and the conflict ended.
Your support has made it possible for APOPO’s HeroDOGs to survey over 2,582,734 m2 of contaminated area, find 74 anti-personnel mines, 68 Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and of course, 183 cluster munitions since the beginning of just this year!
Your support really does make a difference and with our HeroDOGs being so efficient, it looks likely that our goal of surveying 4,000,000 m2 of land by July 2021 will be achieved!
This honestly would not be possible without your support – thank you.
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