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Wind energy is a rapidly expanding renewable technology with massive global investments; however, operating turbines are associated with bat strikes globally, and evidence suggests that without intervention, wind farm collisions could drive some common species to extinction. One widely regarded method for reducing strike mortality is operational mitigation, or curtailment, where turbine operation is restricted at low wind speeds. Despite an increasing number of studies in the Northern Hemisphere demonstrating curtailment effectiveness, no empirical studies have yet been conducted in Australia. This paper reports the findings of a curtailment study implemented at the Cape Nelson North wind farm in southwest Victoria, Australia. Conservation detection dog teams conducted mortality surveys between January and April in 2018 (before; pre‐curtailment) and 2019 (after; during curtailment). Results were consistent with similar studies in the USA and Europe, as curtailment significantly reduced pooled species mortality by 54%. Bat calls did not decline during the study period, and thus were not an explanation for the reduction in fatalities. This study demonstrates that curtailment is a valid method for reducing bat turbine collision in south‐eastern Australia. Consideration should be given to curtailment as a means to reduce bat turbine impacts in Australia, particularly at sites with known endangered and threatened populations, as we act to reduce anthropogenic climate change and its time‐sensitive negative consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Successful alternate method for training dogs on restricted invasive plant material. • Dried or frozen plant samples can be used as a training aid for dogs. • Dogs can detect untrained and live plant targets at high mean accuracies. • Dogs did not display a strong preference of the trained over the untrained target. Weeds can have detrimental impacts on agriculture and the environment, and effective detection of individual plants is a crucial component of weed management. An emerging detection tool is the use of dogs (Canis familiaris) trained to recognise a weed's scent. Scent-detection dogs are well established as a tool in other disciplines but deploying dogs within weed management poses novel challenges. It can be difficult (or even illegal) to source a large number of live target weeds for training and evaluation purposes, due to the risk that these targets will create further detrimental impacts. We investigate whether invasive weed samples could be processed into inert and therefore bio secure dried or frozen forms for use in training. There is currently limited understanding of whether training dogs on frozen or dried plant targets can transfer into successful detection of the live target. We trained four dogs to detect frozen plant samples and four dogs to detect dried plant samples and exposed all eight dogs to scent boards containing frozen, dried and/or live plant targets. All dogs detected the three target types with high precision (100 %) and sensitivity (>85 %). Only one dog showed a statistically significant preference for the frozen odour. Our findings support the use of frozen and dried plant matter as an effective training and evaluation tool for dogs, in cases where the live target cannot be safely used at a broad scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]