Animal rights groups: Bucharest stray dog problem could be solved by 2012

Bucharest could solve its stray dog problem by late 2012 if a consistent programme of capturing, neutering and releasing dogs continues unopposed, according to animal rights groups

December 2010 - From the Print Edition

However the Bucharest City Hall believes that the capital can only control the dog numbers with the addition of an animal shelter to house up to 20,000 strays.
Currently Austrian charity Vier Pfoten is working with Bucharest City Hall’s Authority for Supervising Animals (ASPA) on a city programme which sees the the capture, sterilisation and release of stray dogs back to the place where they were picked up.
The charity and City Hall reached a deal last September, after Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu agreed to stop allowing the killing of street dogs.
“If we are working consistently - with enough resources to keep going at a steady pace of castration and neutering of around 100 a day - we could solve the problem in two years,” says project coordinator of Vier Pfoten Romania, Anca Tomescu.
Meanwhile ASPA general director Robert Lorentz argues the new project is making a difference, but says that this will not be enough to “solve the problem”.
A major issue is that dogs are entering this city from the outskirts of Bucharest - especially from the county of Ilfov, which has no policy on sterilising dogs.
ASPA currently has two shelters in Bucharest which house up to 225 dogs, but is planning to boost this with a mega-shelter which could host 20,000 dogs.
The plan is to renovate a broken-down 1960s Institute of Agricultural Research close to the city as a home for stray hounds.
Vier Pfoten estimates there are around 15,000 to 25,000 stray dogs in Bucharest - however ASPA estimates this figure is double. Both agree that around half the canine population are neutered.
Lorentz says ASPA has killed no street dogs since the City Hall and Vier Pfoten signed the deal. ■