Green Options

A citywide dog cull in China is slated to begin on Thursday, September 10, 2009.  According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the canine cull is taking place in order to contain rabies and control the dog population in the area. 

The Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore has reason to celebrate: The Centre’s first slender-billed nestling is now 140 days old and ready to fledge.

With fewer than 1,000 slender-billed vultures left, this event marks a triumphant milestone in VCBC’s captive breeding program. And there’s more good news: A slender-billed nestling hatched at Rajabhatkhawa Centre in West Bengal has recently fledged.

In a recent release from vulturerescue.org, the director of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Dr. Asad R. Rahmani said

The hatching of this endangered species has given us more confidence in the husbandry and care of vultures practiced at our centres.

India’s ecosystem has been dramatically disrupted by the plummeting population of its critically endangered vultures: Stray dogs have now become one of the top scavengers, and they are reportedly spreading rabies to humans at an alarming rate.

The new availability of extra food left behind by the dwindling number of vultures (from 40 million to just 60,000 vultures, due to poisoning) is a having a catastrophic effect on India’s ecosystem. It has led to a population explosion in stray dogs, who are reportedly “hunting in packs, thus posing a threat to humans as well as wildlife.”

Other scavengers have moved in and taken advantage of the newly available food. But these interlopers – stray dogs and rats, among others – aren’t as effective as the vultures. What’s more, they bring with them disease … As the number of vultures declines, the number of feral dogs in India has risen dramatically, thanks to the extra food available … Diseases such as rabies are on the increase: India now has the highest rate of human rabies in the world, partly due to the increase in feral dogs.

In fact, the rabies problem is so widespread that India has launched a plan to sterilize over 8 million dogs over the next ten years.

More human health issues related to the lack of vultures

Unlike vultures, who pick the carcass of a dead cow clean in an hour and leave nothing but a pile of bones drying in the sun, dogs are much less efficient at carcass disposal.

The decimation of the Amazon due to increased logging, mining and road construction is causing vampire bats in Peru to feast more regularly on the blood of humans.

National Geographic has reported that as human population grows and local wildlife numbers decrease because of development throughout the region, vampire bats have no where else to turn but human blood. As a result, outbreaks of rabies are increasing, and it’s killing people in places where its occurrence has previously been rare.

The Central Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) in India has launched a plan to sterilize over 8 million dogs over the next ten years. The mission: to eradicate rabies from India as quickly as possible. It is estimated that each year over 20,000 people die of rabies in India while at the same time over four billion rupees (close to 80m USD) worth of vaccines against rabies are being imported by the country every year.

The move, which has so far received a good response from society as well as animal welfare organizations is indeed a right step and a better option than the mass-slaughter practice currently used in neighboring China.

In Luanda, the capital of Angola, at least 93 children have died from rabies. They contracted the disease from stray dogs in the community.

A World Health Organization official called for action, “The high number of deaths in Luanda within the short period of time is a cause for serious concern and calls for a thorough investigation.”