Why in news?

The Supreme Court recently criticised the practice of returning sterilised stray dogs to their original locations under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme, calling it “unreasonable and absurd.” This view found support among those impacted by aggressive stray dog packs.

However, experts point out that returning sterilised dogs is actually central to the ABC method’s effectiveness.

The approach aims to stabilise stray populations by ensuring sterilised dogs occupy their territories, preventing unsterilised ones from moving in and breeding, thereby gradually reducing overall numbers.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Importance of Returning Sterilised Dogs to the Streets
• Keeping Streets ‘Unproductive’ for Stray Dog Breeding
• Crisis of Capacity in Implementing SC’s Stray Dog Shelter Order
• Inadequacies in Delhi’s ABC Drive
• Irresponsible Pet Ownership and its Impact on ABC
• Feeding Strays: A Trigger for Aggression

Importance of Returning Sterilised Dogs to the Streets

• In sterilisation-based population control, females are the primary targets, as unsterilised males can still impregnate all fertile females, undermining the effort.
• Spaying females directly curbs reproduction, while neutering males can also reduce aggression — lowering human-dog conflicts.
• Effective Animal Birth Control (ABC) programmes target both sexes, aiming to sterilise at least two-thirds (ideally 70%) of the dog population within a year.
• Since sterilisation cannot happen all at once, returning sterilised dogs to their original territories prevents unsterilised newcomers from moving in and breeding.
• This territorial stability is crucial for ensuring the programme’s long-term success.

Keeping Streets ‘Unproductive’ for Stray Dog Breeding

• If sterilised dogs from certain streets are removed and not returned, those areas become vacant, attracting unsterilised dogs from nearby streets.
• With easy access to resources like garbage dumps, these newcomers breed quickly, undoing sterilisation efforts.
• Returning sterilised dogs ensures that these territories remain occupied by animals that cannot reproduce, preventing fertile dogs from moving in.
• This practice also preserves the local dogs’ social structure, reducing conflicts.
• Most importantly, in the early stages of an ABC drive, it helps secure each area’s progress step-by-step, making population control more sustainable.

Crisis of Capacity in Implementing SC’s Stray Dog Shelter Order

• The Supreme Court’s directive to build shelters and house 5,000–6,000 stray dogs within six to eight weeks has caught Delhi’s civic authorities unprepared.
• With no government-owned shelters and only around two dozen NGO-run facilities accommodating fewer than 3,000 dogs, capacity is a major hurdle.
• Housing thousands of unrelated dogs together also raises welfare concerns — stress, anxiety, and aggression can result despite standard protocols like individual cages with barriers.
• Moreover, dogs are inherently social, forming packs and hierarchies in open environments, making large-scale captivity unsuitable for their behavioural well-being.

Inadequacies in Delhi’s ABC Drive

• Delhi’s lack of holding capacity to meet the Supreme Court’s directive also exposes the severe shortcomings of its Animal Birth Control (ABC) program.
• With an estimated 8 lakh street dogs, effective control requires sterilising 70% — around 5.5 lakh — within a year.
• Spread over 300 working days, this means operating on 1,800 dogs daily.
• Given that each dog needs to be housed for pre- and post-operative care for four days, Delhi would require kennel space for 7,200 dogs at a time.
• In reality, the city’s total holding capacity is under 3,000, meaning the ABC program operates at only about 40% of the required scale.
• This gross shortfall explains why the drive has failed to stabilise the stray dog population.

Irresponsible Pet Ownership and its Impact on ABC

• A weak ABC drive in India is further undermined by irresponsible pet ownership.
• Without a national law mandating dog registration, and with only a few cities having poorly enforced rules, there is no systemic accountability for pet owners.
• Sterilisation and vaccination of pets are also not mandatory.
• As a result, hundreds of unwanted dogs and pups are abandoned daily, while many pet dogs are allowed to roam freely or escape, breeding with street strays.
• This constant influx fuels the stray dog population, making the so-called “Indian street dog” predominantly a mix of crossbreeds.
• Experts recommend that ABC programs should also target pedigreed pets with high breeding rates.
• Governments could encourage compliance by offering incentives for registration and sterilisation, and by imposing steep taxes on breeding pets to curb irresponsible ownership.

Feeding Strays: A Trigger for Aggression

• In urban areas, many residents feed stray dogs outside homes or workplaces, inadvertently making them territorial and aggressive.
• According to experts, true stray dogs form stable packs, are cautious of people, and are mostly active at night. In contrast, abandoned or loosely supervised pets tend to stay near human activity and have smaller roaming areas.
• These “proxy pets” are more likely to show aggression towards people who neither feed nor pet them, creating a recipe for conflict in shared public spaces.