Towards the better management of an increasing dog population in the country, the livestock department of the agriculture ministry has revised the National Dog Population Management and Rabies Control Programme 2009.
The National Dog Population Management Strategy 2019 has incorporated some social concerns and will focus on improving health and welfare of owned and stray dog population, reduce the number of free-roaming dogs and promote responsible dog ownership among others.
Though several dog population control measures have been put in place since the 1980s, due to human attitudes and behaviour such as high human tolerance and feeding of stray dogs, access to resources such as food, water and shelter and high fertility rate of the unspayed owned female dogs are the contributing factors for the rise in dog population in Bhutan.
However, the new strategy which will be implemented this month will look at eradicating rabies, reducing the risk of transmission of zoonotic diseases and dog bites, littering of environment and social nuisance among others.
“We have to see why we are doing this? It is a big nuisance for a community. We have lots of complaints that they can’t sleep at night, we have school-going children bitten by dogs. Of course, we have economic challenges. Tourists always complain. So we have to solve this,” said Tashi Samdrup the Director General for Department of livestock, MoAF.
The strategy has the main three components of policy and legislation, sterilization and public awareness programme. Policies and legislation on dog population management include the registration and identification of owned dogs, registration of breeding facilities and pet shops, prevention of abandonment and unsupervised free-roaming dogs among others.
National Dog Population Management and Rabies Control Committee were also established to guide the implementation and make policy decisions related to the implementation of National Dog Population Management programme. For the implementation, it will be the nationwide programme as the ministry has trained manpower in 20 districts to execute and monitor the strategy independently. The national expertise will plan and execute the dog population management strategy. The strategy is also one of the flagship programmes with the waste management flagship programme.
