Kiribati Dog Names

In June and July of 2017, four bone sniffing dogs were brought to Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati. The dogs were brought to the island to look for traces of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviator who disappeared in 1937 when attempting to be the first woman to fly around the world. Marcy and her canine partners Piper, Kayle, and Berkeley were all Border Collies and they came to the island as part of an expedition that was sponsored by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and the National Geographic Society. TIGHAR researchers had visited the island in the past and narrowed down their search to a particular clearing that they call the Seven Site as a result of its shape. In 1940, a British official explored the site and reported locating human bones beneath a ren tree. Searchers in 2001 located what they believed is the ren tree site; later excavations delivered possible signs of an American castaway. For example, there were the remains of multiple campfires and items that were made in the United States.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noon, disappeared. They were on their way to Howland Island, which is 350 nautical miles northeast of Nikumaroro. TIGHAR has hypothesized that after the aviators could not locate Howland, they chose to land on Nikumaroro’s reef during low tide. Others believe that Earhart’s plane crashed into the ocean and sank, or that she was captured by the Japanese in the Marshall Islands or Saipan.

Within just a few moments of beginning their work, Berkely, a male pup, lay down at the base of a ren tree. The pup locked eyes with his handler as a way to alert her that he had scented human remains. Kayle, a female, alerted her handler to the same spot. The next day, Marcy and Piper were brought to the site and they both alerted their handlers to the scent of human remains. Based on the reaction of all four pups, signs pointed to someone having died beneath the ren tree. Just because the dogs alerted to that particular spot did not guarantee that the archaeologists along on the expedition would be able to find any visible trace of the individual who died under the tree. Efforts, however, were made; the excavation began on July 2^nd, with the plan to leave the island on the 6^th. No bones had been found by the second to last day. On the last day on the island, Dawn Johnson, an archaeologist as well as physician Kim Zimmerman, filled five Ziploc bags with soil from around the ren tree to be sent for DNA testing.