Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated
worldanimalnews.com
worldanimalnews.com
Last time I checked there were no border checks for foxes crossing from France, Poland etc. :)
Is the assumption they don't have suitable habitats outside those countries? Or how do you stop backsliding?
Luckily, vaccination by dropping meat from a plane is a pretty effective way to vaccinate all the wild animals in a wide area.
Claiming eradication is based on continued evidence from robust and internationally recognised monitoring and eradication programmes.
See the "Methods" and the footnotes sections from this CDC page: https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/resources/countries-risk.html
Might be an expensive overkill for a single dog, but c'est la vie, it'll boost the GDP dumping all that money into mil dev anyway.
Wouldn't there be basically no dogs left in a couple year?
So just keep the program going for another 5 years or so and they wouldn't be catching very many dogs in the first place.
You may be amazed how many people don't see pets as responsibilities and either discard them for trivial reasons (like moving house) or let them breed and then dump the litter out to fend for themselves.
I think there were some problems from people breaking the poop bins and scattering the contents everywhere to reduce trust in the system ("it's not my fault, I cleaned up, someone took it out of the bin") but that wouldn't be a problem for strays right?
No. Plenty of people still won't sterilize their pets and abandon their litter in the street or some just run away or are lost or abandoned by their owners, therefore the stray dog population will never be absolute zero.
There is fundamentally no difference between animal consciousness and human in the buddhist view.
But to take it to a human level: you dont see a difference in (chemical) castration of people with mental disability and killing them?
Or in their own framework, did Bhutan just engage in genocide against an unwanted demographic?
If we were talking about a native species of bear, things would be entirely different.
taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism
I think you can compare it with Christians, there are plenty of sinners.
Personally, I eat meat too, and I'm also not a huge fan of needlessly killing dogs, and I'm not even Buddhist! I feel like there's a middle ground where I can care about animals, respect life, and also have a cheeseburger. I'm certain some people will find that to be hypocritical, but it's really not a huge gotcha to me.
I think Buddhism in Bhutan likely did influence this course of action.
The himalayas they also traditionally kill animals for food. They basically consumed 3 things barley, yak products (meat and milk) and tea.
They didn't have much choice; was hard to grow anything else up in the mountains.But they were conscious about it and still careful but other animal lives.
It's not only because they care about the animal, but also very much about they are afraid of the karma they create for themselves.
Now in the refugee areas they prefer to buy their meat from the Islamic community ironically enough.
Also, wtf?
Your comment itself is contradictory is it not? If I am to understand "Also, wtf?" to mean something like "euthanising dogs is immoral because it shortens their life", your other argument is that sterilisation is superior because it essentially starves the other dogs. How is starvation morally superior to euthanasia?
Caveat: I actually also have the same emotional knee-jerk response. I own and love a dog very dearly, and the idea of just "getting rid of all the dogs" doesn't sit well with me.
My "also, wtf" stands.
If I may make an attempt at the moral underpinning, it is something like "survival as intrinsic worth". There are flaws to this position, as with any.
Granted, there are times when euthanasia would be necessary. For example, feral dog populations in areas where the vulture population has died off, where they carry disease and attack passersby and the supply of food is basically uncontrollable, I get it. But that's a case I personally would preemptively qualify if I were considering it.
Directly euthanizing them would definitely be more effective. Reality is just too grim for some people to admit.
Unless the problem really got out of hand, it's not just "some people" who oppose a total cull. Even if people silently approve of the cull, one will find much less volunteers for such an effort than for a large-scale sterilization and vaccination program.
It's hard for a small municipality with a stray problem to justify a facility that is entirely dedicated to the bureaucracy of scheduled death. This is a tale as old as time and the end result is not a happy one.
The term "kill shelter" is much more common than "shelter" because by nature a shelter is temporary housing before euthanization resources are available/confirmed.
Street dogs provide also some services that are valuable like rodent control or cleaning roadkills
I'm totally biased in that euthanizing animals isn't a decision humans are meant to take unless you do have a responsibility for the animal (it's your pet, and it's ill, for instance). But in this specific case, no single human or humans have a direct responsibility for hundreds or thousands of dogs.
The proposition on euthanizing stray animals looks just like a temporal, quick and dirty solution that teaches nothing to humans more than hiding the dirty under the carpet. Nothing after this will prevent stray animals to grow in number after some are reintroduced.
Moreover, it isn't surprising that such points of view like yours are shared as of today, if we stop to think how all those animals ended sick, malnourished, and unprotected. There are people that still think that animals shouldn't be sterilized because of their "will" to reproduce themselves, or are just too lazy to do so.
What authority does any human have to neuter animals at random? Why? Because they will suffer? The kick them out to the wild if you don't want to see their suffering, let them adapt to there.
Few things disgust me more than cruelty disguised as kindness. You can own an animal, you can kill one but only for food or clothing and other survival needs but no one has the right mutilate animals and leave them to linger on.
The problem is humans now have weapons, pesticide and tech to fight off things animals would have helped is with and this is our response. You don't need sterlisarion and kill shelters, animals either starve to death or adapt and move out to areas where they can find food/prey. If you are worried about the ecosystem in a city, donate to a zoo so you can look at whatever animals you want, humans and their pets decimating a city's ecosystem is a natural outcome of the human-animal ecosystem! Our insistence in regulating ecosystems is what is unnatural. Leave the animals be, get comfortable with strays in your city like some cities already are (istanbul and i hear rome too).
"You can create dog parks/sanctuaries and collect leftover food from people and restaurants", is this in practice somewhere?
I ask not to sound annoying or pedantic, just from the deepest curiosity. Animals' care has been always a problem I want to help with, so I'm open to any ideas.
Think of it as a "dog conservation" area where dogs are allowed but predators that kill dog are not and prey dogs can hunt is introduced but not heavily regulated.
The part humans have a hard time with is allowing animals to suffer naturally. But out in nature, natural animal suffering is very common. That's how animal populations self regulate. They say dogs can't survive in the wild, that's partly true because most natural ecosystems have predators that will hunt them and prey that are hard to catch for dogs. But there are prey dogs can catch easily like rabbits that are in many areas (like farms) considered pests. Now imagine a dog conseravation area near rabbit infestes areas instead of pesticides! And imagine adapting dogs from these areas instead of kill shelters.
We humans have the power to craft ecosystems and plenty of unused and unfarmable and hard to develop wild land our pets would love (e.g.: much of oregon).
But even if that wasn't possible, my view is that allowing city dogs to starve is natural, you can feed them excess foods and they will reproduce then, but at some point there won't be enough food for the little ones to sustain them so that would be nature's way of regulating them.
And if you step back a bit for perspective. Humans have the same problem. Not that we humans should let each other starve but people who can't feed their children can avoid prefnancy at will and avert that suffering while animals aren't smart enough to do that.
Humans in the end are not in charge of regulating the natural fate of animals.
Dogs won't go off in to the wild by themselves, they are social animals and like being around people. Not in the least because they receive left over food and get more out of the trash. But they receive very little health care.
Not many people are bothered by them. This is all for the benefit of the animal, not us humans. IMHO.
People and animals are different, I get that but how is it kindess when it is an animal but cruelty when it is people? Instead of mutilating them, feed them.
If they are very hungry, absolutely
/s
A family member had my dog neutered without my permission while watching him him for me, and his rapid decline and death were heartbreaking…. Euthanasia is much less cruel.
Do you have any literature that supports what you are claiming?
I'm talking from both firsthand experience with dogs, and also as an adult human male that had a medical issue where my testosterone production stopped, which was a fascinating and terrifying firsthand experience into what testosterone actually does... I basically lost all passion and drive, and was both extremely fatigued and indifferent to pretty much everything, exactly the same thing that happened to my dog. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
I have also had several male dogs neutered as puppies that had no major health issues, and plenty of energy and excitement about life into old age.
So why does a sudden drop of testosterone cause fatigue and a whole host of other medical and psychological issues in adult males (human, canine, and presumably all mammals), but women and children have plenty of energy with lower levels? I have looked somewhat into the scientific literature on this, and have not seen any conclusive explanation, but would love to know.
There is plenty of research into the symptoms of both humans and dogs about the symptoms of hypoandrogenism/hypogonadism. I would be very surprised if neutering was somehow less harmful (especially since having seen firsthand that it is not).
Didn’t expect that number honestly.
It contains entries such as Consommé d'Eléphant, Le Civet de Kangourou, and Le Chat flanquè de Rats
But good thing that we sterilized those 150000 dogs, anything else would have been inhumane [2]
[1] https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-a... [2] Sorry, I'm bitter.
Examples of the former:
- Researchers declare food unhealthy.
- Invaders declare territory theirs.
When you declare <thing> <attribute>, you are making an assertion with some implicit authority. When you declare that <event has happened>, you are simply making an announcement.
HN scares me sometimes.
It took 2-3 years per dog and lots of financial and time investment for good food, medicine and upbringing to get them to be somewhat normal.
Are you sure you haven't simply rationalized the dysfunction away?
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_Animals
[1] - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/retired-doct...
[2] - https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/in-other-news/060323/...
Fertility control alone: 12% to 40% population decrease. More effective over longer time spans (up to 20 years)
Culling alone: Effective in rapidly reducing population short-term, population replaced through compensatory breeding or migration from other locations
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/27935/1/Smith_LM_Biology_PhD...
Combined CNR and responsible ownership targeted several flows into and between the dog subpopulations: it prevented the street dog population from increasing through births and abandonment, and it increased the adoption of dogs from the shelter dog population to the owned dog population. This combined method had a synergistic effect: neither CNR nor responsible ownership applied in isolation was as effective at reducing street dog population size
The key result of this thesis is that methods targeting multiple sources of population increase, such as combined CNR [capture-neuter-release] and responsible ownership campaigns, will be most effective at reducing free-roaming dog population size
Do you understand this thread is about Bhutan? It's a pretty poor country (source below) where not that many people think of buying a dog and then abandoning it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
Whats the limit on hiw fast you can catch and sterilise them? Neither sounds particularly difficult.
They claim to have sterilised 150000 dogs. At the beginning of the programme, you could reasonably assume that every stray dog you see needs to be processed. Later on in the programme, you'll be releasing a lot of dogs that have already been processed, which seems like a lot more effort for the last 10% compared to the first 10%.
In these programs it is standard to mark the animal in some way. In NYC, for instance, you clip the top of one ear of a cat after it's been processed.
So you catch ten animals, immediately let go any ones that have been marked, process the last one or two -- still more effort to catch, but less effort to treat.
Sterilization alone doesn't work.
But at least they got a huge leg up on the problem.
After lunch, as we continued the hike, the puppy started following us. For 2 hours! At first I thought we'd essentially stolen someone's dog. The Nepali guy I was hiking with explained that the puppy is basically a trail dog.
It soon became obvious that there were many dogs following people, hoping to get food. Eventually the puppy started following someone else who had more food.
So there may not be any such thing as a "wild pigeon". Pigeons were domesticated so long and widely that all modern pigeons in the wild may be the feral descendants of ancient domesticated pigeons. But we still view modern pigeons as just a thing that exists out in the world.
If street dogs have been a self-sustaining population for long enough does that change their classification? What if the population of street dogs is older than many of the cities they inhabit? What if the population is thousands, ten thousand years old?
When I’m there I avoid walking around after sunset or in areas without people, primarily because I don’t want to be stuck in the open with 3 or 4 hungry street dogs hunting me.
I used to live there and always carried one with me, just to activate it was enough to scare them off.
I remember once being awake at night, sick with some flu, and a street dog just would not stop barking. I hear a gate/window open, a tazer activates and the dog stops. So this was just a guy sticking his hand out a window and activating the tazer to get the dog to shut up.
It's a hard life out there for those dogs.
Are there any lessons for other countries in what Bhutan has achieved?
Eg for India a concern is: even with a real effort it’ll be difficult just given the size of the place and the routes available for other dogs to move in.
Then there’s massively underfunded local government and corruption to consider (and harder to fix). Charities do what they can but it’s a drop in the ocean.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/india/india-stray-dog-attack-...
[2] https://scroll.in/article/1056464/why-is-india-seeing-so-muc...
This happened to me at night in Istanbul 10 years ago. I was walking down a side street and a pack of 5-6 dogs noticed me and began to follow me. At first they were tentative, but increasingly the bolder ones in the group closed the distance. I began moving more quickly, but stepping backward, facing the dogs.
They clearly had violence on their minds. By the time I was approaching a well-lit main street, I had been lunged at a dozen times, with each dog only thinking better of it at the last instant.
I only had a backpack which I could use as a blunt weapon, and if the other dogs joined in following a strike from one of the boldest, I was not at all confident in the outcome. Easily one of the scariest experiences of my life.
Turkey is very close to social collapse. People take every opportunity to hate on another group. This goes for the other side -dog lovers- too.
The real problem is the “people” who attack the dogs for no reason and teach them to be violent. Dogs are very social animals and they learn to respond to the society they are in. Where I live the biggest problem we have with stray dogs is we feel sorry for some of them being obese.
The ones you see sitting around in the same spot on multiple days are eartagged, but there are a lot more transient ones.
Nobody is willing to treat animals like animals any more. It's obscene.
It's tempting to imagine that they didn't actually get to 100%, and there are some hidden holdouts who have escaped the program and will re-establish the street dog population covertly.
Intentional pun? :)
And then people will keep posting about their depression medication and about increasing suicide rates.
And no need to read the article as I've grown among stray dogs until relatively recently (as I'm from Eastern Europe), not the best thing ever but certainly preferable to having only us, humans, around.
Also, why are you inserting yourself in a discussion about an article without reading the article?
> Also, why are you inserting yourself in a discussion about an article without reading the article?
Because of my direct lived experience with stray dogs (granted, not in Central Asia but in Eastern Europe), which I'm pretty much sure the author of the article didn't have, nor most of the people reading said article. And because I've already read similar articles countless of times, for more than 15-20 years now (just web search for Brigitte Bardot and Romania), at some point you've read one you've read them all.
However, there are countries where the street dog population is way higher and attacks and rabies are a real problem. When these countries take action, they often mass-cull the dogs. In Bhutan's case, the dogs aren't going anywhere. The 100% number is simply not believable and soon there will be again a small, but manageable population.
This is a super-weird argument. I live in a country where a stray dog population just doesn't exist.
We aren't waist deep in pigeon and rat carcasses. The native carrion birds take care of them pretty quickly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis
Edit: I actually see dead pigeons on the street from time to time. If there is no nearby park with patches of dense woods, there might not be that many carrion birds in urban areas.