site.btaMunicipalities Look for Solutions for Stray Animals, Prioritise Adoption, Castration

The municipality of Blagoevgrad is abandoning the project to build a second shelter for stray animals, Blagoevgrad Mayor Metodi Baykushev told BTA on Tuesday. The reason is that there are ever more donors and adopters. “In just three months, 17 dogs were adopted from the shelter for homeless animals”, Baykushev said. The castration process is also actively underway.

The main task is to ensure the active castration of the animals and information campaigns, the mayor pointed out. He added that the municipality will implement a census of all dogs in Blagoevgrad, as well as increase the fee for owning a domestic dog when it is not castrated.

According to the manager of the regional shelter for stray animals, Irena Vezenkova, creating a new shelter is not the solution to the problem of homeless animals. This would mean "another 200 prisoners", she commented, referring to the expected capacity of a second shelter near Blagoevgrad. Also, another shelter would mean costs for the municipality, as it would be difficult to find enough food for the strays. Vezenkova is adamant that the solution lies in changing the attitude of the owners, since most stray dogs are abandoned pets.

Stray animals are a problem for many municipalities in Bulgaria. At the start of 2024, Panagyurishte Mayor Zhelyazko Gagov announced that the shelter for homeless animals in the city is ready. On February 10, the municipalities in Varna Region reported that they are coming together to build more common shelters to take care of stray dogs.

Although to a different extent, all municipalities face the same problems in trying to reduce the population of stray animals. The present mayors of municipalities in Varna shared that the cost of castrating, chipping and deworming stray dogs is ever increasing, nearing BGN 150 per animal. In general, it is several-fold more expensive to support a stray dog than a child in kindergarten, they calculated.

Castrating the animals does not make sense until people stop throwing their pets' offspring on the street, they argued. The deputy mayor of Aksakovo, Desislava Stoyanova, said that villages' seasonal residents abandon their dogs in the fall. Therefore, the local authorities in Aksakovo are leading an increasingly active policy of persuading owners to castrate female domestic dogs.

One of the first tasks of the newly elected mayor of Valchi Dol, Kaloyan Tsvetkov, was to conduct a census on stray dogs in the municipality. It turned out that there are more than 500 animals on the streets of the municipality's 22 villages. In some places, they move in packs and pose a risk. That is why Tsvetkov is prepared to donate his own plot of land for a shelter for stray dogs.

At the initiative of Varna Regional Governor Andriana Andreeva, a working group of environmental protection experts, veterinarians and lawyers will prepare an analysis and a proposal to the National Association of Municipalities for legislative changes to provide assistance against the "import" of stray dogs from adjacent municipalities.