Asia’s Feral Dog Problem

Feral dogs in Asia are becoming a huge problem and it is now at a stage where cities are going to inhumane lengths to remove dogs and the diseases they carry especially rabies.

Tourists in Bali will often return home with stories of beautiful beaches and amazing night life and also mention the number of street dogs which live around the tourist spots and living off the excessive waste created by humans.

The number of street dogs is so high that they are considered a pest and are given no respect. In 2008 Indonesia announced a rabies epidemic. It is so desperate to rid the country of rabies that it announced a culling program where meat is laced by strycnene and fed to dogs. The strycnene causes a slow painful death. People are so aware of the rabies problem that they are taking the control of the problem in their own hands by using cruel techniques such as slashing dogs throats. Bali has a dog population of 600,000. It was as high as 1,000 000 ten years ago. A culling problem reduced the number but the rabies problem still survives.

The obvious solution is to reduce numbers through neutering but the expence is too much for the poor of Bali. Organisations such as the Bali Animal Welfare Association (BAWA) and Bali Street Dogs are trying to vaccinate dogs for rabies and lobby the Indonesian government to use humane ways to fight rabies. So far the government is vaccinating dogs but only in affected areas and are hiding the culling from tourists.

The World Health Organisation says that in order for rabies to be controlled at least 70% of the dog population has to be vaccinated. This is not possible with very little funding. It also claims that countries who have used culling to control rabies often fail because with out vaccination the disease still spreads. Plusit is impossible to de-sex every dog so breeding still goes on. Both  BAWA  and Bali dogs is trying to give free neutering and vaccination while also educating people about responsible animal care.

Currently Bali has no animal welfare subsidies and the legislation for animal cruelty does not exist. This allows people people to take extreme measures  and to kill dogs with abandon as they are seen as disease carriers.

India also has a feral dog problem. In 2008 the Mumbai High Court announced that stray dogs are a menace. According to the World Health Organisation 60% of rabies deaths occur in India. The Animal Welfare Board of India says mass sterilisation is the most viable solution in controlling the estimated 70,000 strays in Mumbai. The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) says that atleast 70% of the dog population must be sterilised for population control to be effective. The problem is that they have limited capacity for sterilising the dog population. It takes atleast 10 days for a dog to recover from the operation and this limits the number of places for pets to be sheltered while they are recovering. While other dogs wait to be sterilised they still breed and spread diseases. Vaccination of the dogs will be carried out at the same time as sterilised dogs can still spread diseases.

The AWBI also recommends that the garbage that the dogs feed off must be managed better. The feral dogs depend on human refuse to survive which also brings them into the populated areas. The population problem is so large that mass culling seems the quickest way to remove the dogs and the diseases they spread.

When Governments fail to control the situation and it gets out of control then the people must find a way to fix it. It was reported in Malaysia that villagers  of Pulau Ketam, dumped over 300 stray dogs on two uninhabited islands and left them to fend for themselves. These dogs are so use to feeding off human food waste that it left them unprepared for life on the island. They were unable to eat the wildlife and the dogs became immaciated, some turned to cannibalising the weaker or dead dogs to survive. The villagers thought this was the kindest way to remove the dogs which defecate on the streets and attack people.  Instead it has caused mass starvation and rescuing the dogs is complicated further as they run away from rescuers in mangroves.

There are no quick solutions and the problem is so large now that the drastic measures to control numbers are taking place to protect the human population and control disease.