The Endangered silver-headed antechinus and black-tailed dusky antechinus are restricted to tiny populations in a few mountain ranges found in mid-eastern Australia. Effective conservation depends on a good understanding of core habitat areas where they persist so that management can be directed to these areas. However, their distributions are not well known, and they are hard to detect with traditional fauna survey methods. This project tested the effectiveness of conservation detection dogs to survey for these species and optimised the selection of survey sites using potential habitat models.