Neuter & Return

Solving the stray dog problem

 

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There are only 3 ways to solve stray dog problems:

 

1.   To kill or remove every single fertile bitch.

 

2.   To remove the food source, i.e. somehow prevent animals lovers feeding unsupervised dogs

      and remove all rubbish from the streets so that the dogs starve to death.

 

3.   Neuter and Return

 

Extermination campaigns, for example the indiscriminate poisoning or shooting of dogs at night irrespective of whether they are neutered and vaccinated or indeed pets with owners, have never succeeded anywhere in the world.


Neuter and Return’, the policy advocated by the World Health Organisation and the World Society for the Protection of Animals, solves the problem permanently, although dogs have to be tolerated on the streets for 5-8 years for it to succeed. Providing it is implemented to the edge of the urban area it is however a permanent and humane solution.

 

Stray dog populations anywhere depend solely on the amount of food available.  Nature adjusts the population to the carrying capacity of the territory.  If just one fertile female escapes being killed or captured she can breed up to 67,000 offspring in 6 years.  That is why killing dogs can never succeed unless every single female is exterminated. That is why Turkish streets are still full of dogs.
If however the carrying capacity of an area is filled with sterile animals the population will gradually die out, providing no fertile dogs can infiltrate from surrounding areas and providing freshly abandoned dogs are collected by dog wardens, police and residents (as in developed countries).

 

This way, although there may seem to be a lot of dogs on the streets to start with, within a few years the street dog population could be drastically reduced to as much as 80% less. 

 

The main aim of Didim Council and Didim Friends of Animals charity is to get all the stray dogs neutered and released, so there will be no breeding and through natures choice, the numbers will gradually reduce.

 

Like anyone, we do not want to see dogs on the streets at all, but understand the need to be patient, as this scheme takes time.

 

Infuriatingly, our vision is being made so much more difficult by the Mayors of surrounding towns, such as Akbuk and Akyenikoy NOT implementing a Neuter and Return scheme in line with the law.  Their dogs are regularly dumped, often in Didim, making our councils job that much harder.

 

We would have the situation totally under control by now, if it weren’t for dogs being dumped from other places.