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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: July-August 2007

Sofia street dog population is also down by half

 

SOFIA--A 10-month municipal sterilization drive has cut the street dog population of Sofia, the Bulgarian capital city, from more than 20,000 to just over 11,000, mayor Boyko Borissov and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences chair Ivan Yuhnovski told the Focus news agency on July 12, 2007.

The Sofia municipal company Ekoravnovesie sterilized 3862 dogs and euthanized 852 due to illness, injury, or dangerous temperament, said company director Miroslav Naidenov.

The number of dogs killed was approximately 10% of the totals killed in 2003 and 2004, according to data sent to ANIMAL PEOPLE by Sofia activist Alina Lilova in January 2005. "From 1999 though 2002, 45,000 dogs were killed," Lilova added.

The rapidity of the street dog decline may reflect a marked increase in traffic. While the human population of Bulgaria is among the fastest falling in Europe, the population of Sofia has increased since 2002 from 1.2 million to 1.4 million. Car ownership and use have increased even faster.

A more sinister possibility may be that although the Sofia pounds are no longer selling dog and cat fur, fur dealers are still exploiting the street animal population.

"There is a massive industry based on the systematic killing of dogs," claimed Bulgarian SPCA president Yordanka Zrcheva in December 2005. "There are dog fur factories all over Bulgaria, and they produce all sorts of items, like fur coats, leather shoes and bags made from dogs, and so on."

Agreed Doctors for Animals spokesperson Rumi Becker, "The so-called fur lords who run the factories are farming the dogs on the street."

About one million people among the Bulgarian human population of about 7.4 million people keep unsterilized female cats and dogs, Animal Programs Foundation founder Emil Kuzmanov told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

"Pet registration, dog and cat population control, and supervision of human activity involving animals have been neglected for nearly 20 years," Kuzmanov said. "Most of Bulgaria is not served by animal shelters."

In 2006, Kuzmanov said, "Two different proposed Animal Protection Acts were drafted. The essential part of both was prohibition of killing healthy cats and dogs for population control. Yet no adequate measures provided for curbing breeding."

Animal Programs in January 2007 brought the perceived deficiencies in the legislation to the attention of the European Union's Parliamentary Intergroup for Animal Welfare. The Parliamentary Intergroup "sent six identical letters to all of the Bulgarian institutions involved in improving and enforcing the law," Kuzmanov recounted. The letters recommended improvements which were not made.

"In June 2007 the authors of the two bills combined them into one, but still left in the shortcomings," Kuzmanov said, citing lack of differential licensing to discourage breeding, insufficient accountability for dogcatchers, and lack of effective penalties for noncompliance.