By Dharmendra Khandal: Recently, I visited five different sanctuaries of Rajasthan where I saw active predators in most of these areas. But they were not natural predators, but feral dogs. Some were chasing chinkaras while others were chasing neelgai. The locals there told me that these dogs injured or killed some wild animal in their area every other day. Sometimes they would manage to rescue the wild animal and chase out the dogs, but the fact is that these canines have become a growing menace in many wildlife areas today. The bigger sanctuaries are comparatively safe because wild animals can escape inside the forest. Also, the leopards and tigers, which are the predators of these canines, restrict the intrusion of these dogs. Not so the smaller wildlife areas where there are no such big cats. The canines here are therefore more fearless and can be seen chasing wild animals even in densely forested areas. A small area of desert that is protected by the local community has 500 chinkaras and regularly some animal or the other is injured by these dogs. I also saw carcasses of domestic animals and butcher waste around the region, that are attracting the dogs to the area. I suggested to the community head that they should not throw the carcasses in the forest areas but they said waste dumping was not in their hands as people stealthily threw the garbage and carcasses at night to avoid been seen. Is there any solution to this problem? Animal lovers, however, don’t see it as a problem, presenting the argument that dogs are also part of ecosystem and these neo-predators are now balancing the ecology of our jungles too. They, therefore, have a right to live too. But the figures speak for themselves — globally, there exist about 500 million stray dogs and in India, 20 to 30,000 people die every year because of rabies. Recently, a news came to light that canine distemper virus can cause trouble to tigers too. The National Tiger Conservation Authority issued an alert letter to all reserve directors and suggested vaccination of stay dogs around the tiger reserves. Rabies and CDV can be controlled through vaccination, but what happens to the dogs who are killing wild animals directly? Possibly, we can control their population through sterilisation but that has to be ethically and legally correct. Many people say that if we want to save our wildlife areas, we have to continuously kill or remove the dogs. They say that even after sterilisation, these dogs may not infect wild animals but will still continue to kill them. They also argue that there is no fund and trained manpower available to sterilise this unbounded number of stray dogs. Dog numbers are increasing with human population and one key reason is bad garbage management. This is also an indicator of the fragmenting web of our ecosystem. We do need to get some important wild areas dog-free, but of course, after following due procedure. (The writer is a conservation biologist at Tiger Watch, Ranthambore) Source: Article
