Simple and efficient:
We adopt animals and we defend them against the external world.
They breed quickly (in average, by year: 4 litters of 8 in cats, 2 litters of 8 to 12 in dogs). As the natural selection don't act at start, the majority survive. Quickly our resources are drown under this flood.
Attitudes which follows are often less than honourable (cowardly abandons, ...), solve temporarily the problem.
These abandonned animals remain close to humans, the only resource they know. Thus they are often in contact with those, more fortunate, still having a home. They participate to the general reproduction and show them as excellent disease vectors.
They endure a selection, all the more violent that we didn't teach them how to behave in the world they discover, forcing very hostile.
The main of abandonned animals dies from starving, or by accident, after long and horrid sufferings.
A very little fringe survive the time to breed. These litters arm themselves from birth to resist to the conditions killing their parents. They are the true stray ones. They flee human like the plague.
Of course they fall ill, of couse they starve, but they know a few better how to manage themselves. They don't get old, but, however, more than their abandoned parents, natural selection and environment learning start from birth.
The consequency is that they are few in number and discreets, even invisibles, but ill, parasited and in close contact with abandoned ones. They are an uncontrolable infections reservoir for the remainder of their specie.
Their number is depending on abandonned one, they are linked.
A simple example to feel the violence of the phenomenon:
Let Suppose a single couple of cats in a good place providing space and food at will:
As we just see, the she-cat gives 8 kittens each 3 months. A kitten becomes mature here within 6 months.
| Months | New kittens | females of | fertiles females | total number (males and females) |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 3 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 10 |
| 6 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 18 |
| 9 | 40 | 20 | 5 | 58 |
| 12 | 200 | 100 | 25 | 258 |
| 15 | 1 000 | 500 | 125 | 1 258 |
| 18 | 5 000 | 2 500 | 625 | 6 258 |
| 21 | 25 000 | 12 500 | 3 125 | 31 258 |
| 24 | 125 000 | 62 500 | 15 625 | 156 258 |
Numbers for dogs are the same way dizzy.
In short: The more there are abandons, the more they suffer, the more epidemics extend, the more infection reservoirs grow, the more the shame and the risk enlarge for humanity.
Elementary and hopeless:
Facing an explosive situation, awarest ones (town halls, associations, individuals, veterinaries) can't stand inactive.
Two obvious solutions are plain to see:
Both are vain, as would be any solution which doesn't take the problem at its source.
None reduce either overpopulation, or suffering, or risks.
The first option contribute only to hurt everybody, to waste money, and to favour endemics expansion (the created void fills itself by its edges).
Second one increase the phenomenon: Good-willings build the survivors number increase and, thus, their own work. They will be at end discouraged and time and money are wasted.
The only positive point is that it favours the survival of more healthy individuals, reduce, a few, the risk of endemic diseases.
The error fundament is easy to understand:
Both options reinforce the responsibles of the situation in their attitude , since they think there is a solution managed by others.
However, quite all conditions are near to join together to win.
Whichever are the holded solutions, the first step must pass by drawing up a LAW forcing the identification, otherwise the vicious circle remains active, the tape remains open, efforts vain.
Identification allows, besides, to retrieve quickly owners of the loosen Pets who, presently, join the growing number of abandonned.
In the same time, information General Campaigns have to be done, showing what is the responsibilty implied by the ownership of a Pet, and the benefits of such a law.
WITHOUT THIS LAW, NOTHING CAN BE USEFUL AND EFFICIENT.
The first solution comming in mind:
This is a plan to round up and kill all stray animals. It is usually initiated as an immediate response to a spring of human transmittable diseases cases (rabies, leptospirosis). It is supposed that the killing of thousands of stray dogs and cats will decrease cases. Often the true goal of such programs is to eradicate all stray animals. Hundreds of animals are killed with barbaric methods: Catched strays are killed by strychnine, bludgeoning, electrocution, buried alive, etc.
These cruel and barbaric methods are condemned by numerous organisations, including the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), and Fenua Animalia here.
In plus, the mass killing of stray animals does not solves the problem:
It is impossible to catch every single stray animal, without exception: The capture staff catches in streets the most domesticated animals, less ill than those really wild and suspicious. Survivors interbreed quickly. Within few years, they re-establish and surpass the old population level (see above).
These mass killings are thus without benefic effect toward epidemics, the reverse, they favour their extension since the illest act as strain.
At last, in plus of its inefficiency, this solution is unpopular (who can guarantee to never let its pets to escape, even the day of a systematic round up?) and the resentment can only grow as campaigns goes by.
In short:
Stray elimination programs can't reach their goals , they are expensive, they must be often repeated, they favour epidemics extension, they exacerbate conflicts and, for elected, but carrying out a repression challenging democracy, they are a nice catapult to the exit.
For rambling Pets ((lost, escaped, let free), compulsory identification allows to find quickly owners. The following to give is to be defined by each implicated commune.
For strays (i.e. without owner), those who are too old, severely wounded, ill, hostile, or carrier of contagious diseases, are slain.
The others are identified (tatoos and/or collars), registered, cured, vaccinated, sterilized, deparasited, then returned back to their original environment.
So processed animals cause less nuisance to the community and continue to render their expected services. (rodents, etc.) More, having a good health, being watched, occupying safely a territory, they defend it against their congenerics, limiting so the diseases spreading.
This method wears also the following advantages:
Objections :
- Its effect is not immediately visible.
- It requires a continuous management of these populations, which can be expensive.
Answers:
+ To the first it can be said that the setup of a general identification program for owned Pets never goes fast, both measures can thus be phased together. Synergism will speed up things.
+ To the second, extermination campaigns call up much more staff very regularly, for the round up itself, for the necessary preparatory notices and for the unavoidables following complains. The cost is not comparable.
+ More generally, as human substitutes himself to Nature, from Pets birth, it is logical to be forced to substitute Pets death too, otherwise there is to accept the "let-it-be" price (accidents, epidemics and shames). This last option being more and more rejected by whole Polynesia.
To reinforce the efficiency of this solution, it would be good to institute incitating measures for Pets sterilization. Most of owners who resort to abandon, do it in utterly confusion, because of lack of information, lack of money.
In short:
This solution reach all goals.
It requires a regular follow-up and shows this way to be an opportunity for public interest jobs (skilled staff training for rounds up, controls, and for the whole management).
More, it had already been tested in many countries, which brang it to be recommended by the U.N.O. professionnals.