The NDMC has done well to withdraw its circular on removing stray dogs to sanctuaries. It must have known that the removal of sterilised and vaccinated stray dogs from their habitats would derail the ABC programme
It is good that the New Delhi Municipal Council has withdrawn the question it circulated, as to whether stray dogs should be removed to sanctuaries. The Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, notified in December 2001 under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960), is the law of the land on the matter, and it proclaims that stray dogs can only be removed for neutering and vaccination, and have to be returned to where they had been taken from. Indeed, their return to, and continued existence in, where they had been lifted from, is imperative for the success of the ABC programme, the implementation of which, as several World Health Organisation documents point out, is the only effective method of controlling stray dog populations.
This is because dogs are territorial and will not allow dogs from other areas to come into their preserves. With sterilised and vaccinated dogs keeping unsterilised and unvaccinated dogs out, the authorities implementing the ABC programme can move area by area, covering an entire city or district within a pre-fixed period, returning only occasionally to areas already covered to sterilise sundry unsterilised and unvaccinated dogs that might have sneaked in.
With sterilised and vaccinated dogs removed, unsterilised and unvaccinated dogs would move into the area they once occupied. Municipal authorities will have to return to it repeatedly to sterilise the new comers. They will not be able to concentrate on neutering stray dogs in new areas and cover an entire city or district within a specific period. The stray dog population will continue to grow. One must remember here that the implementation of the ABC programme will not immediately reduce the number of stray dogs. Sterilised and vaccinated dogs will live out their biological spans of life, which is essential for preventing unvaccinated and unsterilised dogs from coming into their areas.
The World Health Organisation has repeatedly underlined the futility of killing or removing stray dogs to reduce their numbers, which can only be ensured by the ABC programme. In its Technical Report Series 931, the WHO’s expert consultation on Rabies, which met in October 2004, states, “Since the 1960s, Animal Birth Control programmes coupled with rabies vaccination have been advocated as a method to control urban street male and female dog populations and ultimately human rabies in Asia.”
Robert K Bogel of the WHO and John Hoyt, the then President, World Society for the Protection of Animals, as well as the Humane Society of the United States, made this clear in their joint preface to the Guidelines for Dog Population Management released in May 1990. They stated, “All too often, authorities confronted by problems caused by these [stray] dogs have turned to mass destruction in the hope of finding a quick solution, only to find that the destruction had to continue, year after year, with no end in sight.” According to the Guidelines, “Removal and killing of dogs should never be considered as the most effective way of dealing with the problem of surplus dogs in the community: It has no effect on the root cause of the problem, which is over-production of dogs”.
In Technical Report Series 824, the WHO’s expert committee on Rabies, which met in September 1991, had stated, “There is no evidence that the removal of dogs has ever had a significant impact on dog population densities and the spread of rabies. The population turnover of dogs may be so high that even the highest recorded removal rates (about 15 per cent of the dog population) are easily compensated by survival rates.”
Several informed studies have underscored the futility of killing. Dr JF Reece writes in “Dogs and Dog Control in Developing Countries”, in The State of the Animals 2005 (HSUS: Editors Deborah J Salem and Andrew N Rowan), “In Delhi, a concerted effort at dog removal killed a third of the straying dogs with no reduction in dog population”. It has been the same elsewhere in India. In his paper, “ABC responsible for decline in human rabies cases”, Dr Chinny Krishna, co-founder and chairman of the Blue Cross Society of India, cites the instance of the Madras corporation’s catch and kill programme that began in 1860. He quotes, Theodore Bhaskaran, a former Post Master General of Madras, as stating in an article, “In the 1970s, the number of stray dogs destroyed by the corporation was so high that the Central leather Institute, Madras, designed products-such as neckties and wallets from dog skins”. Mr Krishna has pointed out elsewhere that the number of dogs killed by the Corporation had gone up to 30,000 per year by 1995. Yet the city’s stray dog population and the incidence of human rabies continued to rise.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai killed 4,49, 568 stray dogs between 1984 and 1994. Yet, neither this nor the expenditure of `1,67,65,497 on mass killing, led to any reduction in the incidence of human deaths from rabies or the population of stray dogs. Hence, on March 25, 1994, the MCGM, without any direction from any court, issued a circular recording its decision to stop mass killing because “in spite of killing so many dogs every year, their very high birth rate prevented a reduction in their population.”
Killing does not help because, as The Guidelines state, each habitat has a specific carrying capacity for each species depending essentially “on the availability, quality and distribution of the resources (shelter, food, water) for it. The density of population for higher vertebrates (including dogs) is almost always near the carrying capacity of the environment. Any reduction in the population density through additional mortality is rapidly compensated by better reproduction and survival.” In fact, when dogs are removed, “the survivors’ life expectancy increases because they have better access to resources.”
Besides reducing the number of stray dogs, the ABC programme lowers their aggression levels. Since sterilised bitches do not come on heat, fights among dogs over bitches, which raise their aggression levels, do not occur during mating seasons when they are most frequent. This drastically reduces the number of instances in which a higher level of aggression leads to a greater intolerance of provocation and biting of people. Also, since sterilised bitches do not have litters, the rise in the aggression level that occurs when bitches are guarding their puppies against threats — which are many — does not occur.
The NDMC, which is implementing the ABC programme, cannot be unaware of all this. Then why the question it circulatedIJ