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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: July-August 2007

Sri Lankan district court ruling puts Kandy Animal Birth Control program in jeopardy

 

KANDY, Sri Lanka--A District Court ruling that there are too many dogs at large in Kandy may permit the Kandy Municipal Corporation to resume killing street dogs on October 5, 2007, 60 days after the ruling was issued.

The killing would contravene a national no-kill policy proclaimed in June 2006 by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who reaffirmed it in July 2007--but Kandy has defied official policy to kill dogs before.

"The Kandy Animal Birth Control program started in 2002, with municipal cooperation," summarized Eva Ruppel ("Padma") of the Save Our Friends Association. When KMC cooperation was discontinued, we went to the courts to prevent the killing of dogs. Despite a court-order in our favor, the KMC killed 360 dogs in August 2005."

ABC supporters stopped the killing by charging Kandy officials with contempt of court. The August 5 ruling dismissed the contempt charges, and gave the ABC program 60 days to reduce the dog population.

"Of course we appealed," Ruppel posted to the Asia Animal Protection Network. "We have to safeguard the 10,000 dogs who have been already sterilized and vaccinated. We have no intention of giving up the only sensible way to stabilize the population and to prevent rabies. Kandy had no human rabies cases since 2002," Ruppel added, "and dog bite cases have drastically decreased. We have no reason to return the dog pound to the KMC and let them start killing again."

Ruppel attributed the recent reappearance in Kandy of large numbers of mother dogs with puppies to dumping, probably by dogcatchers from other cities--a common problem in many economically disadvantaged nations, as communities without effective Animal Birth Control programs try to relocate unwanted animals to communities that have them.

Nationally, according to Smriti Daniel of the Kandy Times, "The government is relying heavily on contraceptive depo-provera injections for female dogs. Between 2005 and 2006, the number of injections administered jumped from 5,651 to 49,968. While simply injecting dogs may seem the lesser of two evils, the other choice being exterminating them," Daniel added, "animal activists have voiced serious concerns over the use of the injection, believing it to be seriously detrimental to the dog's health, possibly responsible for malignant mammary tumors in the animals."

Said Champa Fernando of KACPAW, the largest animal welfare organization in Kandy, "At the moment we are unable to urge the government to stop its chemical birth control program, given the no-kill policy, the [reported] increase in the dog population [to about 2.5 million nationally], and the increase in rabies incidence in the country."

Director of Public Health Veterinary Services P.A.L. Haris-chandra told Daniel that Sri Lanka had 73 human rabies cases in 2006, up from 55 in 2005, when the dog population may have been temporarily reduced by the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004.