Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation plans permanent shelters to house stray dogs

Bhubaneswar: Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is looking for suitable land to develop shelters to house stray dogs following a Supreme Court direction. The shelters will be unlike a dog kennel where sterilised dogs are quarantined before they are released.“On a trial basis, we brought 20 dogs to a shelter inside the existing kennel at Mancheswar. We wrote to all the institutions to give us data regarding the presence of the number of dogs close to their premises. We also asked if the institutions, particularly schools and colleges, have fencing and boundary walls,” said Dr Debi Prasad Kund, who is in charge of BMC’s animal birth control (ABC) programme.BMC officials said they are looking for land to develop three types of shelters — one for 100, a second to house 500 strays, and a third for 1,000 — as per the SC guideline.

“The dogs will be housed in the shelters till their natural mortality. They will be provided food and treatment,” said a BMC official.Kund said the ongoing exercise of dog sterilisation is going on as usual. But in the case of animals to be housed permanently in the shelter, they will be sterilised first and then taken to the shelters.Officials said the city’s stray dog population is far more than the national average of 11 dogs per 1,000 human population, with the latest dog census pegging the number at 47,126, averaging 36 dogs per 1,000 human population.

But the number of stray dogs that are seen near institutions is around 5,000.The BMC conducted the first-ever city-wide stray dog census in India in two phases in Sept, the result of which provided crucial insights into the canine population of the state capital. The census revealed the stray dog population constitutes 3.62% of Bhubaneswar’s urban human population of 13 lakh.