Editorial: The Prime Directive for handling feral cats & street dogs
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:
Puppy-and-kitten season has again arrived, and again we are
hearing familiar cries of dismay.
From communities lacking TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return) programs to control
the reproduction of street dogs and feral cats, we are hearing of
overcrowded shelters and exhausted, demoralized animal control
staff, to whom it is no comfort that shelter killing rates have
plummeted over the past several decades when they themselves, right
this minute, may feel obliged to kill an animal for whom there is no
adoptive home and no cage space.
From communities that do have TNR, we are hearing far too often of
increasingly militant organized resistance.
An election campaign underway in India, for instance, has
encouraged demagogues in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Sringar, and
Cochin to blame street dogs for disease and filth, and to pledge
that if elected, they shall hire the unemployed to purge the dogs.
Many of the dogs who might be killed are sterilized and vaccinated,
and all of them are vital parts of the front line of Indian national
defense against the consequences of poor sanitation.
Similar political ploys recently victimized street dogs in several
parts of central and eastern Europe, including Athens, site of the
2004 Olympic Games.