5 ms·

so in ~5 years time, no street dogs in Bhutan???

by masteruvpuppetz 3y ago

ars 3y ago
The article says they've been doing it for 15 years, so there's something odd about their numbers.
- troupo 3y ago
  It's not odd. Sterilization without any additional measures is useless. People will keep buying and abandoning dogs. And if there's enough food, they will reproduce faster than you can catch and sterilize them
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    Citation needed.
    - troupo 3y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940938/ Fertility control alone: 12% to 40% population decrease. More effective over longer time spans (up to 20 years) Culling alone: Effective in rapidly reducing population short-term, population replaced through compensatory breeding or migration from other locations https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/27935/1/Smith_LM_Biology_PhD_2020.pdf https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/27935/1/Smith_LM_Biology_PhD... Combined CNR and responsible ownership targeted several flows into and between the dog subpopulations: it prevented the street dog population from increasing through births and abandonment, and it increased the adoption of dogs from the shelter dog population to the owned dog population. This combined method had a synergistic effect: neither CNR nor responsible ownership applied in isolation was as effective at reducing street dog population size The key result of this thesis is that methods targeting multiple sources of population increase, such as combined CNR [capture-neuter-release] and responsible ownership campaigns, will be most effective at reducing free-roaming dog population size
      - goodpoint 3y ago
        You were claiming that this is not effective because people are buying dogs as pets and abandoning them. Do you understand this thread is about Bhutan? It's a pretty poor country (source below) where not that many people think of buying a dog and then abandoning it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > catch and sterilize them Whats the limit on hiw fast you can catch and sterilise them? Neither sounds particularly difficult.
    - rantallion 3y ago
      I imagine sterilising the ones you've caught is the easy part. How do you actually catch them all though? They claim to have sterilised 150000 dogs. At the beginning of the programme, you could reasonably assume that every stray dog you see needs to be processed. Later on in the programme, you'll be releasing a lot of dogs that have already been processed, which seems like a lot more effort for the last 10% compared to the first 10%.
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        Yes and no. In these programs it is standard to mark the animal in some way. In NYC, for instance, you clip the top of one ear of a cat after it's been processed. So you catch ten animals, immediately let go any ones that have been marked, process the last one or two -- still more effort to catch, but less effort to treat.
        samus 3y ago
        They could just not bother to catch them if they see ones with clipped ears. Also, catching them might be quite simple if you attract them with treats and treat them decently.
  - samus 3y ago
    Since they have been doing it for 15 years, they now presumably have structures and processes in place to keep up with sterilizing more dogs. They also had lots of volunteers helping. If this keeps going, it's probably manageable in the future.
    - troupo 3y ago
      The thing is, you don't want to keep sterilizing 10k dogs a year indefinitely.
      - samus 3y ago
        If it's a step down from 100k, it's progress! Also, the numbers have been decreasing for a long time already, else Bhutan couldn't conclude that they are done.
        troupo 3y ago
        They are not done. They claim they sterilized all the dogs. If they stop doing what they're doing even for a year, they'll have to do this again. Sterilization alone doesn't work.
        samus 3y ago
        I agree. Their numbers are either so low that it counts as "done", or they actually didn't encounter any for a certain amount of time. They must either continuously sterilize the small trickle of remaining strays or plan a follow-up campaign. Implementing low-cost tree registration of pets should also help.
    - RGamma 3y ago
      The only sane, permanent solution is to police (prospective) animal owners or traders, who are the actual root cause of such mess. Why should everybody else compensate indefinitely for their lack of care and character?
      - 3y ago
INTPenis 3y ago
That's impossible. Because where do street dogs come from? They come from homes. As long as dogs exist there will be street dogs. But at least they got a huge leg up on the problem.
- linuskendall 3y ago
  That’s not true for the most part in South Asia. Here we have dog populations that are basically native and have lived alongside humans for a long time. So these dog population are not stray pet dogs.
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    A couple months ago, I was hiking in Nepal. The two of us had lunch at a restaurant on the trail where there was a puppy. One of us pet the puppy, the other fed it. After lunch, as we continued the hike, the puppy started following us. For 2 hours! At first I thought we'd essentially stolen someone's dog. The Nepali guy I was hiking with explained that the puppy is basically a trail dog. It soon became obvious that there were many dogs following people, hoping to get food. Eventually the puppy started following someone else who had more food.
    - datadrivenangel 3y ago
      We had stray dogs follow us up to Everest base camp! In the snow and cold, they really wanted to get fed.
  - samus 3y ago
    Then they are the offspring of dogs that escaped or were abandoned long ago. Probably they also took over the population of any related species they can interbreed with.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      That's an interesting historical and semantic question. So there may not be any such thing as a "wild pigeon". Pigeons were domesticated so long and widely that all modern pigeons in the wild may be the feral descendants of ancient domesticated pigeons. But we still view modern pigeons as just a thing that exists out in the world. If street dogs have been a self-sustaining population for long enough does that change their classification? What if the population of street dogs is older than many of the cities they inhabit? What if the population is thousands, ten thousand years old?

so in ~5 years time, no street dogs in Bhutan???

ars 3y ago

The article says they've been doing it for 15 years, so there's something odd about their numbers.

troupo 3y ago
It's not odd. Sterilization without any additional measures is useless. People will keep buying and abandoning dogs. And if there's enough food, they will reproduce faster than you can catch and sterilize them
- goodpoint 3y ago
  Citation needed.
  - troupo 3y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6940938/ Fertility control alone: 12% to 40% population decrease. More effective over longer time spans (up to 20 years) Culling alone: Effective in rapidly reducing population short-term, population replaced through compensatory breeding or migration from other locations https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/27935/1/Smith_LM_Biology_PhD_2020.pdf https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/27935/1/Smith_LM_Biology_PhD... Combined CNR and responsible ownership targeted several flows into and between the dog subpopulations: it prevented the street dog population from increasing through births and abandonment, and it increased the adoption of dogs from the shelter dog population to the owned dog population. This combined method had a synergistic effect: neither CNR nor responsible ownership applied in isolation was as effective at reducing street dog population size The key result of this thesis is that methods targeting multiple sources of population increase, such as combined CNR [capture-neuter-release] and responsible ownership campaigns, will be most effective at reducing free-roaming dog population size
    - goodpoint 3y ago
      You were claiming that this is not effective because people are buying dogs as pets and abandoning them. Do you understand this thread is about Bhutan? It's a pretty poor country (source below) where not that many people think of buying a dog and then abandoning it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > catch and sterilize them Whats the limit on hiw fast you can catch and sterilise them? Neither sounds particularly difficult.
  - rantallion 3y ago
    I imagine sterilising the ones you've caught is the easy part. How do you actually catch them all though? They claim to have sterilised 150000 dogs. At the beginning of the programme, you could reasonably assume that every stray dog you see needs to be processed. Later on in the programme, you'll be releasing a lot of dogs that have already been processed, which seems like a lot more effort for the last 10% compared to the first 10%.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      Yes and no. In these programs it is standard to mark the animal in some way. In NYC, for instance, you clip the top of one ear of a cat after it's been processed. So you catch ten animals, immediately let go any ones that have been marked, process the last one or two -- still more effort to catch, but less effort to treat.
      - samus 3y ago
        They could just not bother to catch them if they see ones with clipped ears. Also, catching them might be quite simple if you attract them with treats and treat them decently.
- samus 3y ago
  Since they have been doing it for 15 years, they now presumably have structures and processes in place to keep up with sterilizing more dogs. They also had lots of volunteers helping. If this keeps going, it's probably manageable in the future.
  - troupo 3y ago
    The thing is, you don't want to keep sterilizing 10k dogs a year indefinitely.
    - samus 3y ago
      If it's a step down from 100k, it's progress! Also, the numbers have been decreasing for a long time already, else Bhutan couldn't conclude that they are done.
      - troupo 3y ago
        They are not done. They claim they sterilized all the dogs. If they stop doing what they're doing even for a year, they'll have to do this again. Sterilization alone doesn't work.
        samus 3y ago
        I agree. Their numbers are either so low that it counts as "done", or they actually didn't encounter any for a certain amount of time. They must either continuously sterilize the small trickle of remaining strays or plan a follow-up campaign. Implementing low-cost tree registration of pets should also help.
  - RGamma 3y ago
    The only sane, permanent solution is to police (prospective) animal owners or traders, who are the actual root cause of such mess. Why should everybody else compensate indefinitely for their lack of care and character?
    - 3y ago

INTPenis 3y ago

That's impossible. Because where do street dogs come from? They come from homes. As long as dogs exist there will be street dogs. But at least they got a huge leg up on the problem.

linuskendall 3y ago
That’s not true for the most part in South Asia. Here we have dog populations that are basically native and have lived alongside humans for a long time. So these dog population are not stray pet dogs.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  A couple months ago, I was hiking in Nepal. The two of us had lunch at a restaurant on the trail where there was a puppy. One of us pet the puppy, the other fed it. After lunch, as we continued the hike, the puppy started following us. For 2 hours! At first I thought we'd essentially stolen someone's dog. The Nepali guy I was hiking with explained that the puppy is basically a trail dog. It soon became obvious that there were many dogs following people, hoping to get food. Eventually the puppy started following someone else who had more food.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    We had stray dogs follow us up to Everest base camp! In the snow and cold, they really wanted to get fed.
- samus 3y ago
  Then they are the offspring of dogs that escaped or were abandoned long ago. Probably they also took over the population of any related species they can interbreed with.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    That's an interesting historical and semantic question. So there may not be any such thing as a "wild pigeon". Pigeons were domesticated so long and widely that all modern pigeons in the wild may be the feral descendants of ancient domesticated pigeons. But we still view modern pigeons as just a thing that exists out in the world. If street dogs have been a self-sustaining population for long enough does that change their classification? What if the population of street dogs is older than many of the cities they inhabit? What if the population is thousands, ten thousand years old?