“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
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Text of an open letter of our organization Dear Yuri Mikhailovich! Not so long ago, our article "The Dogs’ Tomorrow of Moscow Fauna" was published in the “Mir Novostei” newspaper. In this article, we told our readers about numerous negative phenomena existing in Moscow today that had been engendered, in many ways, by the municipal program of neutering stray dogs and returning them for free habitation on the city territory.We learned that following the publication of this article, on your instructions, a meeting was held at the Moscow Department of Nature Management and Environmental Protection on October 5. However, the meeting did not discuss any of the issues we had brought up in the article, and it was decided to set up a working group for the purpose of organizing the construction of an animal shelter. Although we specifically had made a point in our article that building animal shelters without adopting a system of economic and legal measures we had proposed had nothing to do with solving the problem of homeless animals. The municipal program of neutering came to Moscow as a sequel to local experiments to sterilize homeless animals, carried out since the early 1990s by western animal-welfare organizations financed through charity donations in some cities of the developing countries in Asia and Southern Europe. Those cities played the role of a cheap test site for studies, which is only natural: in western countries proper, such programs are unthinkable, for any dog walking a street without the owner shall be captured automatically. Even so, the said experiments nowhere proved conducive to solution of the problem and for this reason as a rule were accompanied by tough measures on the part of local authorities aimed at reduction of the stray dog population. Thus, it is only natural that in Moscow, too, this program (financed not from charity funds, but from the budget, running into millions, and with zero result, at that!) not only failed to settle, but in many ways compounded the whole complex of social and ecological problems. The cause of these problems is economic – overproduction of pet animals: the enormous number of pet animals produces posterity on a regular basis, for which there is no demand, and eventually this posterity finds itself on the streets. Yet, it is impossible to go back to the old system of reducing the population of homeless animals based on the extermination of animals only, as such system is a has-been of our society’s social, ecological and economic development. The civilized West, too, having come face to face with a similar problem of cat and dog overproduction, resolved it successfully by developing economic incentives for the owners to neuter their pets (above all, other than pedigree stock). One of such options is differentiated taxation, when the owner is tax-exempt if he neuters his pet. At present, 80-90% of pet cats and dogs in the EU and USA are neutered. This guarantees the absence of homeless animals, because, thanks to the adjustment of demand and supply, the animal population corresponds to the number of those willing to keep and care for them. This puts an end to suffering, pauperization, conflicts between relatives and neighbors of thousands of citizens, who pick up abandoned pets only to save them. Animal shelters become profitable, with a stable turnover. Not because animals die in the shelters at the beginning of life due to infection and poor conditions, as the case is at our animal shelters, all of which are intended for life-long admission, but because the animals are adopted by their new owners. In our view, there are no hurdles for Moscow to proceed in this particular manner. However, reducing the solution of the problem to setting up animal shelters alone would mean deceiving the already run down citizens, who keep picked-up pets in their apartments out of pity, spending sometimes their entire meager pensions on them, not the budgetary funds. These citizens are looking forward to something quite different: solution by the authorities of social problems, connected with overproduction of pet animals, i.e. they expect the arrival of those willing to adopt their animals and discharge their apartments this way. These people do hope to see the day, when each animal of those kept in their apartments acquires, and when it will no longer be necessary to pick up more animals in the street. In view of the foregoing, may we kindly request you to exert your influence on making constructive decisions that would normalize the extremely adverse situation with animals in the city, and would make it possible to stop further pumping money out of the budget to finance hopeless efforts that are similar to scooping out the water gushing from an open tap that remains deliberately unnoticed. In this connection, here is our proposal. You are topping the list of candidates to deputies of Moscow City Duma from the party “Yedinaya Rossia” (“Indivisible Russia”). If, in the context of the aforesaid, officers of the departments under you are unable, even on your instructions, to influence the solution of the problem, then maybe it would be practical to treat this pressing issue as if it were initiated by the party. The problem of homeless animals at present is the hottest social issue to the city, it embraces the matters of protection of the life, health and security of the citizens, all of them priorities of “Indivisible Russia”. Besides, these matters touch upon material welfare and social development, and, as we learned from the press, today the problem figures prominently in the voters’ letters. Inclusion of commitments to solve the above problem in the election campaign of “Indivisible Russia” would be a substantial step closer to the voters. Faithfully yours, Yevgeny Anatolyevich Ilyinsky, Director, Charitable Society for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals, AON |
