“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
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HUMANISM INSIDE OUT RESPONSE TO T.N.PAVLOVA’S INTERVIEW |
Autonomous non-profit organization HUMANISM INSIDE OUT RESPONSE TO T.N.PAVLOVA’S INTERVIEW
“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
published in the “Moscow Environment” newspaper
No 21, June 2005
Author: Evgeny Ilyinsky
(Comment by site editor: The article-response was not written at our initiative, but at the request of a journalist of the “Moscow Environment” newspaper.
However, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, apparently unwilling to criticize the stance of the Department of Housing, Communal Services and Municipal Improvements, never authorized the printing of the article.)
I will now try to prove this briefly here.
The data of numerous studies indicate that around 80% of the litter of homeless dogs and cats born in the streets do not live to an adult age. Therefore, the main reason for the growing population of homeless dogs and cats is not that their reproduction in the street, but the flooding of the streets with unclaimed litter of pet dogs and cats. The pet owners take the litter of their pets to Kalitnikovsky (‘Little Bird’) and other similar markets, not even suspecting that, in the absence of demand for animals the puppets and kittens will be thrown out into the streets that very day. The surviving animals will become homeless. And there is no point neutering the abandoned animals in a situation where the unclaimed litter of millions of pet cats and dogs is thrown out into the streets! The setting up of a network of animal shelters is not a way out, either, the shelters cannot be stretched endlessly. The solution of the problem lies in the neutering of pet animals. To bring this about, the problem should be handled in a different manner altogether: there must be economic measures for the pet owners to realize they stand to gain from pet neutering – introduce, like they did it in the U.S.A., for example, differentiated taxation of cat and dog owners, where the owner pays times as low a tax for a neutered animal.
I also disagree with T.N.Pavlova, when she makes a point, alleging that because the turnover of domestic animals is subject to regulation under federal legislation, we are unable to change anything at Moscow level. But, according to the RF Law “on Environmental Protection”, any entity in the RF is free to keep a record of features and sources of adverse impact on the environment, i.e. to register the dog owners and introduce taxation for them by way of payment for adverse impact on the environment that homeless animals certainly exert. By taking such course of action we shall not restrict or ban the breeding of dogs and cats (the way this is done in some West European countries), but shall be able to attain similar goals gently, using economic incentives.
Nor was Pavlova right, saying that in the West stray dogs are allegedly not slaughtered, but are trapped-neutered and released in their former habitat. At a recent meeting of Moscow City Duma, where the draft Moscow law on animals was discussed, Pavlova was asked: “In what cities of Europe do they do it they way you intend to do: trapping, followed by releasing?” Her reply was this: “Athens, Kishinev, Budapest, Sophia and some Polish towns …”. But, is it just to refer to Greece and Bulgaria, countries that border on Asia, as the entire West, and are any data available indicating that the problem in those cities was settled specifically with the aid of neutering programs similar to the Moscow neutering program? After all, everybody knows that Athens had grave problems with stray dogs on the eve of the Olympic Games there. As for Sophia, reports reaching here at present say that there are nearly 10 thousand stray dogs there. Which means that neutering proved ineffective there, too. “A dog without a lead or an owner is an outlaw!” – such a stance is not even discussed in the most advanced countries: EU, U.S.A., Canada, Japan, and none of these countries has adopted a state policy of neutering dogs with subsequent release thereof back in the city (let alone the financing of such programs from the budget!).
Besides serious contradictions and problems, such as, for example, mass extermination of cats and wild animals by stray dogs, the Moscow neutering program engenders a social conflict in society between those to whom streets without dogs are unthinkable and those who regard dogs as nuisance. Article 17 of Part 3, RF Constitution reads: “Exercising of human rights and freedoms should not infringe upon the rights and freedoms of other citizens”. The RF Civil Code (Articles 230, 231 and 232) stipulates “the right and freedom” of any RF citizen to rescue a neglected animal. Any person is free to bring such an animal home. However, partisans of the neutering program want the dog to live nowhere but in a public territory, which will naturally inconvenience part of the citizens. Furthermore, the champions of the dogs’ right to live in the streets on the one hand, defend all crimes committed against humans and animals by dogs in the streets, while on the other hand they allow for the mob law to be practiced in respect of the dogs that commit such crimes. At the same time, the inconvenienced citizens are deprived of their legitimate “rights and freedoms” to resolve the situation in their favor. The people are thus cornered! They have only one option left to them: eliminate covertly the inconvenience, i.e. the animals themselves – which we see happening in Moscow on a mass scale! Every citizen of the RF is entitled, under the RF Civil Code (Article 137) to demand that animals be treated in a humane manner. However, “insisting on humane treatment” and “demanding that habitation in a public territory be allowed” is not the same, rather, it is quite different, since living in the street is a natural cause for death and mass cruel treatment of homeless animals.
Therefore, it is quite legitimate to demand that animals should be withdrawn from the environment and be placed in an animal shelter. And the shelters (to follow the example set by the West!) must be state-run facilities of unlimited admission that may not deny admission of neglected dogs or dogs and cats abandoned by their owners. Animal welfare activists carry out actions towards accommodating such animals. Unaccommodated animals are drugged to sleep by humane means, which practice is supported by the leading and authoritative animal-welfare organizations in the world.
However, as we do not have such animal shelters in this country, people rescuing homeless animals are forced to cram their flats with cats and dogs. This is a violation of the rights and freedoms of such people, of their neighbors and members of their families.
And, of course, the number of stray dogs in Moscow is not 25 thousand, to quote T.N. Pavlova: according to Moscow city department for forests and according to the data received from some nature-protection areas, this figure is no less than 100 thousand! The figure of 20-23 thousand dates back to 1997 -2000. At that time, stray dogs were trapped never to be released again (according to some sources – up to 40 thousand individuals per year). Since the year 2002, the practice of removing stray dogs from the environment has been discontinued. The number of pet dogs has increased sharply, too. Can anyone believe that the population of such dogs has been unchanged for the last 6 years? One can only suggest a catastrophic death rate of dogs in the streets)?
It is equally wrong to think that once waste dumps are closed down, the dogs will be devoid of food and will vanish. Most stray dogs at present receive the lion’s share of food from the hands of their guardians and compassionate citizens, and can do without the waste dumps.
T.N.Pavlova insists that once the population of stray dogs declines, “females give birth to all-female litter". There is no information on published scientific data supporting such stable mechanisms of dog population self-regulation. Moreover, some foreign researchers believe there do not exist any stable self-regulation mechanisms to control the size of populations (packs) of animals like dogs (even feral) that have been through a long period of domestication.
One other thesis of Pavlova that “dogs usually bite humans, while protecting their litter, and at the time of dog weddings” is also false. There are verified observations, indicating that following “government-issue” neutering, many stray dogs become more aggressive as they had experienced fear during the trapping procedure, and afterwards, when they were caged. This often results in grave consequences for their psyche.
However, when the owner nurses his pet back to health in home conditions after neutering, this is an entirely different situation: in this case, the animal gets attached to the owner even more out of gratitude for the care and for the fact that it (the pet) was not abandoned in its hour of distress.