“Mir Novostei” newspaper
dated 13.09.2005
THE DOGS’ TOMORROW OF MOSCOW FAUNA
Svetlana and Evgeny Ilyinskys,
Autonomous non-profit organization
“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”

      According to the Constitution and federal legislation, the citizens of Russia have the right to biodiversity of wildlife within the natural complexes of their residential areas. This right is also promulgated in the 1992 “UN Convention on Biodiversity”, signed by Russia. However, the letter we received recently from the commission on Moscow Red Data Book reads: "The situation induced by the homeless animals problem is particularly disturbing in respect of animal species entered in the Moscow Red Data Book... . The program of restoring biodiversity in specially protected natural areas, adopted by Moscow Government, is on the brink of derangement ...". The fact that neglected dogs exterminate the wild fauna is no news. This is reflected on the pages of the Moscow Red Data Book and the Russia Red Data Book and in numerous data of Russian and foreign scientific research. In short, they have been combating this phenomenon for years. Anywhere, but in Moscow, because free habitation of stray dogs in Moscow entire area has been legitimized within the framework of the neutering program oriented to these dogs. Ñëîâîì âî âñ¸ì ìèðå ñ ýòèì ÿâëåíèåì áîðþòñÿ óæå ìíîãî ëåò. Íî òîëüêî íå â Ìîñêâå, ïîòîìó ÷òî íà âñåé å¸ òåððèòîðèè ñâîáîäíîå îáèòàíèå áåçäîìíûõ ñîáàê óçàêîíåíî â ðàìêàõ ïðîãðàììû èõ ñòåðèëèçàöèè. It should be stressed that legitimized in contravention of the RF Law “On Environmental Protection” (Art. 3; 60) and RF Law “On Wildlife” (Art. 22; 24).
      Besides, pursuant to the RF Constitution (Art. 19, Part 2) and the RF Law “On fundamentals of legislation of health protection of Citizens” (Art. 17), every Russian citizen is entitled to health protection “regardless of the place of residence". This notwithstanding, last July, the organizations of Moscow Department of Housing and Communal Services and Municipal Improvements circulated among unitary client management directorates a ruling document, which, in particular, reads: “In case humans are bitten by animals in a locality, safe rabies-wise, the animals shall not be removed by the veterinary service and taken to the Moscow Veterinary Station. The SUE “WATS” shall not take action in response to such applications." The document goes on to say: "... if virtually every application contains a statement of the fauna expert to the effect that all animals are aggressive, along with a request not to return the animals to their former habitats (without a confirmation of the facts of aggressive behavior), the applicants are requested to supply the name and address of the animals shelter organized in the applicant’s administrative district". It follows from this document that the only municipal neglected animals trapping service from now on shall not be fulfill applications for no-return trapping of even aggressive dogs, if these dogs live in a district, where there is no municipal animal shelter. Mind you, most Moscow districts have no animal shelters. This situation makes the exercising of citizens’ constitutional rights to health protection fully dependent on where the citizens live. But even if there is a shelter in the district, there is still no guarantee that the application will be fulfilled, because the said document reads: “If in the application column “Reason for trapping” aggressive behavior of animals is given, the chief fauna expert must himself visit the habitat, find the dog that created a conflict situation, draw up a report, attach to the application residents’ complaints in writing, give their addresses, contact phones and a detailed description of the dog and its habitat." Which means, that the question of dog trapping may only be considered if the dog has already bitten humans, which should be proved by medical certificates. If, however, the dogs inconvenience people or if people are simply afraid to let their children outdoors because of a pack of dogs occupying the children’s playground, today this is no good reason for trapping. However, we shall give you a quotation from the results of research of Russian epidemiologists: "A sample survey of communal children’s playgrounds in three districts of Vladimir City has shown that the playgrounds are 100% contaminated with excrements of domestic carnivores. ... 100% invasion with toxocarosis, toxoplasmosis and leptospirosis, which fully agrees with the results for Omsk City". It looks like dog health is more important than that of a human being, i.e. priority of preventive measures in the field of health protection of humans as stated in the RF Law “Fundamentals of RF Legislation on Health Protection of the Citizens” (Art. 2).
      However, to us, animal-welfare experts, the most important consideration is this: the program of neutering homeless animals, with release in their former habitats, contradicts humaneness toward animals – the program’s main goal formulated in Moscow Government Decrees No 403-RZP and No 819-PP. Today, it has been proved by documents that this program, elaborated specifically for dogs and cats, has led to the extermination of animals for the sake of humaneness to which it had been created.
      This summer, experts of the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) surveyed 372 guardians of Moscow homeless cats. Virtually all respondents said they regarded attacks by stray dogs as one of the main causes for the death of homeless cats, and more than 50% of the respondents indicated that attacks on cats by stray dogs were the main cause of the death of homeless cats in Moscow. The survey also revealed that 75% of the kittens born in the street do live to the age of virility, and that the average period of cat survival in the street is 1 year.
      Since 2002, we have been trying unsuccessfully to stop the practice of walling up cats in Moscow basements, the holes in which are closed up in compliance with the building codes and regulations. But recently we found out that Gossanepidnadzor and the Disinfection Center indeed cannot, for obvious reasons, allow legitimizing of cats habitation in the basements. The problem is that it is the cats that are the main vectors of fleas in the basements, and this is a scientifically established fact. Yet, the aforesaid decrees refer to homeless cats and stray dogs as to “an integral part of the urban ecological environment". In the meantime, cats are, by origin, southern animals, and by veterinary standards can only live at temperatures not lower than + 15 degrees. Hence, the question: if a cat is “an integral part of the ecological environment”, why does the length of its life in this environment (side by side with dogs, or in frost conditions) range from a few minutes to several days, although their biological life is over 20 years?
      A homeless animals neutering program, in principle, is unable to reduce (or even curb) the animal population even at much heavier that currently allocated budgetary resources. This follows from the results of numerous research programs, Russian and foreign. The fundamental inability “to reduce humanely the population of homeless animals” contradicts the main goals of application of the said program and, consequently, is in conflict with the RF Law “On protection of Consumers’ Rights” (Article 4, Part 2), providing for consistency of the formulated goals with all works and services.
      In conditions, where the greater part of homeless animals litter dies, while the numbers of pet dogs and cats (mostly litter thereof) appearing in the street keep growing, there is no point neutering homeless animals alone. In industrialized countries, people realize this and stake on the mechanisms restricting the fertility of pet dogs and cats. This eliminates the reason itself for the appearance of homeless animals: their overpopulation. For this reason, there exists differentiated taxation of the owners of pet dogs and pet cats in such countries. If the owner neuters his pet, the tax for him becomes times as low. This is the main economic lever restricting the breeding of animals. Thos who take neutered animals from animal shelters are tax exempt.
      By the way, a few words about animals shelters. The advocates of the neutering program accuse Moscow prefectures of failing the program. Allegedly, the prefectures do not establish shelters in the districts. But there has long existed a huge super-shelter for dozens of thousands, if not for hundreds of thousands of animals in Moscow: these are the flats of Muscovites, who pick up cats and dogs in the streets out of pity. Every new house that is being built may be regarded as a new animal shelter. Therefore, the opening of a municipal animals shelter even for 1200 adoptees will not make a big splash: nothing more than window-dressing and a source of income for somebody.
      In the West, people have a guaranteed right to surrender pets they intend to abandon to stet-owned animal shelters. But these shelters are different from ours, where there are never vacant places, our shelters are invariably impregnated with infection and are crammed with sick and dying animals. Vacancies in the western shelters are made available thanks to a system of painless euthanasia of animals, for which it is impossible to find the owners... Such methods if regarded humane and is recognized by all leading animal-welfare organizations. On the other hand, nobody in industrialized countries thinks it is humane to leave homeless dogs in the streets: even the most extremist animal-welfare organizations, that set free mice from laboratories, do not insist on releasing the dogs in the streets. In advanced countries, action is taken to reduce the number of euthanasias through mass ‘choose your pet’ campaigns, but, which is more important, by restricting the breeding and eliminating overpopulation of animals.
      As for programs of neutering homeless animals, with subsequent release in their former habitats, abroad such programs are referred to as trapping/neutering/release (TNR), and they are carried out in industrialized countries, involving cats only, but never the dogs: in no jural state the presence in the street of even a single dog without a lead or the owner can be regarded as legitimate. It is generally agreed that there exist no effective measures to protect the population or fauna from the dog. This is why a TNR program for dogs has been borrowed not from the West, as they try to make us believe, but from some cities of the South and South-Eastern Europe as well as from the developing countries of South-East Asia. It should be noted that there are no data on the success of such programs, rather the reverse is true: the dog population there keeps growing, while the problem remains unsolved. Thus, the attempts of the circles concerned to lobby in Russia the TNR program for dogs, alleging that in the West TNR programs for cats have been a success constitute a flagrant ecological fraud!
      Besides the vain references to successful western experience, we should also touch upon the pseudo-scientific arguments in favor of continued neutering program. However, references to positive results of 10-15 year old local Russian experiments, having something to do with stray dogs are sheer speculation! This is as good as justifying continued manufacture of as drug after thousands of people were poisoned by it, reasoning that the early experiments with volunteers yielded good results. The neutering program has for four years been under way in Moscow: this not just a super experiment, but a standing laboratory for observation and research of (alas extremely negative!) results of the said program, whose forced participants (or, rather, hostages!) have become all Muscovites and the entire city fauna. This experience of living side by side with thousands of dogs and testing on oneself the entire spectrum of their adverse impact – constitutes the results that today may be observed and understood not only by the expert, but by a child, and these results will multiply exceed practical importance of “positive” results of 10-year old research.
      Briefly, about the unfoundedness of the ill-fated arguments. First, it is impossible to put up a ”dog” barrier made of “friendly” dogs with a view to preventing the penetration of “alien” dogs in the city. The dogs are only capable of guarding a very small part (“nucleus”) of their territory, whose boundaries may be crossed by any alien dogs. Besides, western scientists have proved a trend of dog migration not from regions to the cities, but vice-versa. The myth about the danger of invasion of aggressive dogs from Moscow suburbs has been made up specially to justify the neutering program. Second, vaccinated dogs are only capable of protecting themselves from the rabies disease for one year - such is the period of vaccine validity. As for trapping the thousands-strong dog population on an annual basis, nobody will do it for the sake of vaccination alone: no budget will afford this. Third, stray dogs cannot play the role of a waste disposal machine: the wastes they eat do not disappear, but move to children’s playgrounds in the form of infected faeces, in which dangerous microorganisms continue living in the soil for years. Fourth, the dogs are no good for reducing the rat population, either; on the contrary, rat and dog families often live in the same lair: rats find it convenient to scavenge the dogs’ left-overs.
      Moscow is Russia’s second city to have embarked on a TNR program for dogs. The maiden experience in Nizhni Novgorod had extremely adverse consequences due to the increased dog population. As a result, the neutering program was terminated two years ago.
      According to the RF Civil Code, any citizen of the RF is entitled to the “right and freedom” to rescue a neglected animal: any person is free to take it home. However, some animal-welfare activists equate protection of cats and dogs not with the solving of the homeless animals problem, but with defending the animals’ right to live freely in the streets. Worse still, in so doing, they, on the one hand, defend the entire adverse impact of such habitation, while on the other hand they leave the animals vulnerable to extermination by those who are unhappy with such neighborhood. After all, the inconvenienced citizens are deprived of the “rights and freedoms” to discharge the situation to their satisfaction. People are cornered! They only have one option left to them: to eliminate covertly the inconvenience, i.e. the animals proper, which we see today happening in Moscow on a mass scale! Any citizen of the RF is, under the RF Civil Code, (Article 137), to demand humane treatment of animals. However, “demanding humane treatment” and “demanding habitation in a public area” are different things, rather things that oppose each other, since habitation in the streets constitutes an obvious cause for the death and cruel treatment of homeless animals.

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