Animal Birth Control is fixing the dogs faster than anti-dog attitudes

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

 

 

Animal Birth Control is fixing the dogs faster than anti-dog attitudes

 

by Merritt Clifton

 

AGRA, AHMEDABAD, BANGALORE, CHENNAI,

DELHI, THIRUVANATHAPURAM, VISAKHAPATNAM--The

Koramangala pound in Bangalore may have been the

quietest location in India having anything to

with street dogs in the aftermath of a January 5,

2007 fatal pack attack on a nine-year-old girl

named Sridevi.

The Coalition for a Dog-Free Bangalore

and similar groups nationwide made Sridevi's

death focal to ongoing efforts to reverse the

nine-year-old central government commitment to

sterilize street dogs instead of killing them.

(See guest column on page 7.)

In Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala state,

also called Trivandrum, a February 10, 2007

confrontation between dogcatchers capturing dogs

for extermination and proponents of the local

Animal Birth Control program reportedly burst

into violence.

At Koramangala, however, built circa

1934 by the British troops, several hundred dogs

rested in low-roofed cement kennels with scarcely

a bark. Some awaited sterilization surgery in a

clinic where dogs were for 65 years electrocuted.

Others were under post-operative observation to

avoid infection. Soon they would be returned to

the neighborhoods where they were collected.

The unusual quiet of the Koramangala

pound may result mostly from the kennels being

arranged in single rows, with each front facing

the back of another kennel instead of the front

of another kennel and an unfamiliar dog staring

back. The dogs are housed in compatible pairs

whenever possible.

Other ABC headquarters in Bangalore were as noisy as they were busy.

The attractively landscaped Com-passion

Unlimited Plus Action hospital and shelter on the

Hebbal Veterinary College Campus closely

resembles the Help In Suffering facilities in

Jaipur, whose ABC program was among the first

prominent successes. Both institutions were

founded by British expatriate Crystal Rogers

(1906-1996). Rogers recruited and trained CUPA

core personnel Suparna Ganguly, Shiela Rao, and

Sanober Bharucha.

CUPA also manages the Koramangala ABC program and an outpatient clinic.

On February 23, 2007 CUPA hosted World

Health Organization chief F.X. Meslin and Animal

Welfare Board of India chair R.M. Kharb for the

formal debut of new national Rabies Free India

campaign, sponsored by the Animal Welfare Board

and the federal Ministry of Environment and

Forests.

Using an oral vaccine developed

especially for street dogs, Rabies Free India,

" will be launched in Delhi, Chennai and

Bangalore, " Ganguly explained to The Hindu. " The

vaccine is ensconced in a food pellet. When the

dog bites the pellet, the vaccine mixes with the

dog's saliva. "

After five years of testing, the oral

vaccine was recently approved for general use by

the Drug Comptroller General of India.

Another Bangalore ABC program operates

from the headquarters of Karuna, formerly called

the Bangalore SPCA, across a sidestreet from

CUPA on the Hebbal campus.

Canvassing adjacent neighborhoods for two

hours apiece on foot, I found that up to 70% of

the adult dogs in the relatively affluent Karuna

sector were sterilized, and more than 90% of all

dogs in the poorer and more densely populated

CUPA sector, which had about half again as many

dogs.

Two half-grown litters belonging to

unsterilized bitches living near encampments of

migrant construction workers accounted for most

of the unsterilized dogs in the Karuna sector.

They appeared to be almost chubby, with little

competition for local food waste.

There were by contrast only two puppies

in the CUPA sector, where only six of the 64

dogs seen lacked an ear notch marking them as

sterilized and vaccinated.

A third organization, the Animal Rights

Fund, handles the outlying southern parts of

Bangalore where Sridevi was killed.

While I was not able to canvas the ARF

sector on foot, few dogs were visible from

bumper-to-bumper car traffic--except around meat

shops, as documented by ARF volunteer Poornima

Harish (page 7.)

Officially, Bangalore still has 56,500

street dogs, 21% fewer than seven years ago,

after sterilizing more than 25,000 in recent

years and killing nearly 6,000 who were deemed

potentially dangerous.

Granted three acres of prime lakefront

real estate on the edge of Bangalore in 2003, on

which to build a new state-of-the-art ABC

hospital and adoption center, ARF fought

squatters for nearly three years to clear the

land for construction, and is still trying to

raise the $20,000 estimated construction cost.

The delay, however, may have been

indirectly beneficial, in that the ARF design

concepts have considerably evolved.

Indian cities lacking effective ABC

programs are still killing more than four million

dogs per year, chiefly by poisoning, ARF

founder Dilip Bafna told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

This is more than twice as many dogs as

are killed per year by U.S. animal control

agencies and humane societies.

 

Spectacular successes

 

The Indian cabinet in December 1997

accepted a unanimous Animal Welfare Board

recommendation that ABC should fully replace

killing dogs for rabies and nuisance control by

2005. The Blue Cross of India had demonstrated

the concept in Chennai since 1964. Successful

full-scale ABC programs were already underway in

Mumbai and Jaipur as well, but with low

visibility, and consequently with relatively

little controversy.

The 2005 goal was missed, largely due to

thin resources--but where ABC promoters found the

means, the results are dramatic. In Bangalore,

Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and

Visakhapatnam, the ratio of street dogs to

humans has dropped from about one dog per 10

people, still seen in areas without ABC, to as

few as one dog per 160 people.

Ahmedabad, starting later, is fast

catching up, with an ABC program entirely funded

by the city government, managed by the Animal

Help Foundation. Working from city buses

converted into mobile clinics, the 28 Animal

Help veterinarians sterilized 45,011 dogs in

2006, about 10,000 more animals than were

sterilized by any other organization in the

world, and are aiming for 60,000 in 2007.

In Delhi, ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim

Bartlett observed, " The dog populations are down

and the dogs you see are in relatively good

shape. "

Likewise, in Mumbai, " There are many fewer

dogs. I only saw two or three females who seemed

to be nursing pups, or had been recently, "

Bartlett said. " There were some young dogs, but

I saw no unweaned puppies. Most of the dogs I

saw seemed to be intact males, " indicative of a

strategy--which ANIMAL PEOPLE has warned Mumbai

ABC program planners against--of sterilizing

females first, to reduce the dog population

fastest. The hazardous aspect of sterilizing

females first is that intact male dogs are the

most likely to display aggressive behavior,

especially when they congregate around the

relatively few remaining bitches in heat.

" There is obviously still much

sterilization work to be done in Mumbai, "

Bartlett concluded, " but the situation would

seem to be much improved. Nine years ago, it

was not possible to look in any direction without

seeing one or more dogs. Now you may go blocks

without seeing dogs. When you see them, there

are likely to be two or more, " probably close to

a food source.

" There is much less food garbage visible

in the streets, " Bartlett noted. " We saw a few

areas with garbage dumps and there were always

dogs there, but not so many " as before the ABC

programs started.

Along with sterilizing and vaccinating

dogs, the most successful ABC programs emphasize

the necessity of removing food waste from the

streets, which if not consumed by dogs may

encourage population explosions among feral cats,

rats, monkeys, and pigs.

While removing garbage seems to have kept

monkeys and pigs from replacing dogs in Mumbai,

Bartlett observed that cats appear to be numerous

and breeding in the vicinity of a major temple.

" In Agra, " Bartlett reported, " where

there is no ABC program, the situation for dogs

is as bad or worse than nine years ago. "

In inner Chennai, the Blue Cross of

India and People for Animals ABC programs have

cut dog numbers to barely more than might be seen

in any U.S. city, though the U.S. dogs would not

be free-roaming.

Far into the rural districts on the

fringe of the sprawling Chennai suburbs, two

Blue Cross of India satellite facilities appear

to be practicing ABC with remarkable success.

Dogs still sprawl in the dust beneath peddlers'

carts, but have conspicuous ear notches.

In and around Visakhapatnam, the

situation is similar. Seeing a single

unsterilized mangy bitch near an outlying temple

was cause for a Visakha SPCA volunteer to summon

an animal ambulance--while mentioning that the

presence of one untreated dog might indicate the

presence of others, who possibly followed job

seekers in from the countryside.

On January 18, 2007, the government of

Tamil Nadu recognized the success of ABC by

allocating 5.8 million rupees to sterilize more

than 275,000 dogs in 50 cities.

 

Fighting in the streets

 

But then there was the Thiruvananthapuram

incident, reflecting hostility toward dogs

persisting among Indians who fear recurrent

rabies outbreaks, accept religious dogma that

dogs are unclean, or promote other uses of the

ABC funding.

The official version of whatever happened

at Thiruvananthapuram, as reported on February

12, 2007 by an anonymous " special correspondent "

to The Hindu, was that " The City Corporation

sought police assistance after foreign nationals

allegedly assaulted a municipal health teamŠOne

animal handler who was injured in the incident

was hospitalized, " the anonymous correspondent

claimed, though later accounts clarified that he

was only treated as an outpatient for a hand

injury.

" The Kovalam police booked four foreign

nationals, " The Hindu said, " including Avis

Lyons of Animal Rights Kerala, on charges of

assault and preventing government officials from

discharging their duty. "

The dogcatchers claimed to have been

" accosted and manhandled by a gang lying in wait

for them, " after they were " lured into a trap. "

" I set up Animal Rescue Kerala to

implement ABC, " responded Lyons in an e-mail to

members of the Asian Animal Protect-ion Network,

" and have been sterilizing street dogs for four

years. ARK has sterilized all of the dogs in the

Kovalam area, and has memorandums of

understanding with the panchayats (village

councils) of Vizinjam and Venganoor, in effect

covering the whole of the area.

" In September 2006, " Lyons continued,

" the mayor of Trivandrum asked if ARK would teach

his staff to do ABC. Twenty Trivandrum staff

were at ARK for three days learning how to catch,

pre-medicate, and handle stray dogs. They then

used this information to kill most of the stray

dog population in Trivandrum, " Lyons alleged,

" including dogs sterilized by ARK, and also

people's pet dogs. The Trivandrum staff have

been caught on camera killing and burying dogs by

the roadside, " Lyons charged. " I am pursuing

court proceedings to stop the killings. "

On the night of February 10, 2007,

Lyons said, " we saw the dogcatchers' vehicle

full of dogs, " outside a hotel in an area

covered by one of the ARK memorandums of

understanding. " We were told that the hotel had

called the dogcatchers, " Lyons continued. " All

of the dogs in the area have been sterilized and

vaccinated by ARK. There were 11 dogs in the

vehicle, two with collars, one a dachshund very

sick with distemper.

" We tried to stop the vehicle, but the

police arrived and told us we had to let it go.

They would not talk to my advocate, nor would

they let me fetch the memorandum of

understanding. I asked the policeman in charge

for his name, but he hid his badge and then took

it off so that I could not see it. By this time

the vehicle with the dogs had been driven off,

the dogs going to a certain death. "

Thiruvananthapuram veterinarian L.

Ravikumar asserted that Lyons and friends " have

raised a challenge to the rule of law. "

Commented Blue Cross of India chair

Chinny Krishna, " This is most ironic considering

that it is the municipality which is not

following the rule of law--namely the ABC rules. "

Elaborated A.G. Babu of the SPCA Idukki,

" Ravikumar said that he would continue catching

and killing stray dogs, and claimed that he

would never care for the provisions in the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 or the

ABC rules. He claimed that killing dogs was part

of his style of ABC. "

Affirmed Roxanne Davur of the Terra Anima

Trust in Ooty, " All catchers trained by Animal

Rescue Kerala for the ABC programme are now used

to catch and kill dogs, and besides their salary

are paid an extra twenty rupees for any dog

killed. "

Thiruvananthapuram health committee chair

G.R. Anil reluctantly suspended the dogcatching

program amid the exposure, he told The

Hindu--and revealed the reason for it.

" Every year, we capture a large number

of stray dogs from the wards neighbouring the

temple during the run up to the Attukal Pongala

festival, which attracts tens of thousands of

devotees, " Anil said. " There is a likelihood

that the devotees will be exposed to marauding

stray dogs. "

But sterilized and vaccinated dogs seldom harm anyone.

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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