This biologist and her rescue dog help protect bears in the Andes

One unusual team joining National Geographic’s two-year exploration of the Amazon River Basin: scientist Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya and her canine tracking companion. The two first set eyes on each other at an animal shelter in Cusco, a historic city perched in the Peruvian Andes. Something about this mutt reminded Pillco of herself—whippet-thin, tough, persistent. A family had already expressed interest in the dog, but Pillco won her case. With an important new job, the shelter’s dog would help the cause of Amazonian conservation in Peru.

“She’s going to be a hero,” Pillco promised. She took the dog home to her apartment, where she began teaching Ukuku—the name she chose—how to sniff out bear scat on mountain trails. Ukuku is a word for “bear” in Quechua, the Indigenous language of Pillco’s childhood. She grew up a few hours’ drive from Cusco, in a village where storytelling gives special power to the black Andean bear, the animal Pillco now studies as a field biologist for the Peruvian nonprofit Conservación Amazónica ACCA and as part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition.

(Protecting the legend of her youth, the Andean bear.)

The research project, involving more than a dozen scientists, includes the river’s high mountain origins, where cloud moisture and droplets of melting snow form the very beginnings of the world’s greatest freshwater river system. The Andean bears’ role in this elaborate ecosystem is crucial, Pillco believes. Because they eat seeds in the lowlands and climb long distances to defecate in the mountains, they’re helping preserve forests by dispersing tree seeds at cooler, higher altitudes as the climate warms.

Pillco knew a tracking dog would be vital, and by the time she moved into her mountainside field station and lab last year, Ukuku was well on the way to fulfilling her job description: Andean bear tracker, on call 24/7. When the station alarm sounds, signaling that a camera trap has captured a bear for temporary collaring and study, usually the first beings on the trail—day or night—are the Quechua biologist and her beloved perrita valiente, her brave little dog.

(Poaching threatens South America's only bear species.)