Need humane plan to sterilise 50k stray dogs a year: NGOs

Panaji: Animal welfare NGOs in Goa on Saturday formed an umbrella organisation, the Goa Animal Federation, and demanded a “humane and scientific” plan to manage the state’s stray dog population.

They opposed any plans to create mass stray dog shelters as in other states, calling it “illegal, inhumane, and impractical”. They said the animal birth control (ABC) plan failed due to a complete lack of action on the part of various authorities. Goa needs infrastructure to sterilise 50,000 dogs a year to control the dog population, said Hema Sardesai, leading the NGO collective in the announcement.

The Goa Animal Federation proposed a three-year ABC plan to contain the dog population. The formation of the federation comes after a recent state govt order to formulate a task force to deliberate on the Aug 11 Supreme Court order on street dog relocation in Delhi.

The federation’s president, K D Row, proposed a plan to contain animal-human conflict with an approach to curb three causes of dog bites: food aggression, mating aggression, and aggression from cruelty.

According to the proposal, the federation plans to offer its assistance to govt to help meet the proposed target to sterilise 1.5 lakh dogs in three years, with a daily estimate of 167 surgeries per day in two ABC centres, one in each district.

“The state animal husbandry department, which couldn’t handle the ABC programme properly for years, utterly failed due to a lack of understanding, funds, and willingness, and hence, can never be trusted to run a shelter for 1.45 lakh dogs,” said Row.

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