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Melody Chu
Homeless animals struggle for life
by Melody Chu
Three newborn puppies have been found hiding under a piece of wood in a rubbish heap in Kam Tin. Yim Tse-shing, chief executive of Love Pet Action, a private animal welfare organisation, will go to feed those puppies whenever he has a chance.
¡§We're planning to take these puppies back to our dog shelter nearby,¡¨ Mr Yim said. ¡§But we have to make them get familiar with us first. We can only get near them when their mother is not around.¡¨
¡§This is no easy task. We do want to help the stray cats and dogs. But sometimes they'll back away if we get near them. If we can't even touch them, there will be no way we can help them.¡¨
Mr Yim founded Love Pet Action six years ago out of sympathy for stray animals. His group now owns four private animal shelters, keeping more than 400 dogs and 100 cats.
Stray animals have been a serious problem in Hong Kong . The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) received about 27,700 stray and abandoned animals last year.
¡§Many people keep pets just for fun,¡¨ Mr Yim said. ¡§They dump their pets once they get tired of them. Most of the dogs in our shelters are mongrels. They're always abandoned since they don't have lovely appearances.¡¨
The AFCD, independent animal welfare organisations and private animal shelters have worked together to deal with the problem.
But Mr Yim is unhappy with the practice at the AFCD and the SPCA, as about 22,000 of the stray animals collected last year were put down. Only about 5,700 were kept for adoption.
Stray dogs and cats caught by the AFCD will be kept for four days. During the period, dogs will be scanned for identifying microchips which store the contact information of the owners. Under the Rabies Ordinance, people who abandon their dogs could be fined as much as $10,000 and sentenced up to six month's imprisonment.
Dogs without chips and cats will be separated for further assessment if nobody comes to claim them after four days. The healthy and gentle ones will be transferred to animal welfare organisations such as the SPCA and the Society for Abandoned Animals to look for adopters. Others will have to be put down.
¡§The policy of keeping the animals for four days is meaningless,¡¨ Mr Yim said. ¡§The dogs will be killed anyway. Very few of them will be adopted in the end.¡¨ He said the dogs in their shelters would be kept until they died naturally and their bodies would be cremated.
The SPCA considers the root of the stray animal problem is overpopulation.
¡§Every year, more than 4,000 animals are imported to Hong Kong . The locally bred ones are not yet taken into account. At the same time, more than 20,000 animals are humanely destroyed each year,¡¨ Rebecca Ngan Yee-ling, public relations and communications manager of the SPCA, said.
The SPCA sees controls over animal births and imports, rather than mercy killing, are better solutions to the problem.
¡§We hope the government can strictly control the import and trading of animals, as well as allow animal welfare organisations to help carry out birth control measures on stray animals,¡¨ Ms Ngan said.
To control the births of cats, for example, the SPCA has started the Cat Colony Care Programme (CCCP) since August 2000.
Under the programme, stray cats are brought to the SPCA's medical centres for sterilisation and chip implantation. Through sterilisation, the multiplication rate of stray cats will decrease and thus their number will be controlled.
¡§Over the years, we've sterilised more than 8,000 stray cats. If these cats continued to multiply, there might be more than a million stray cats. The programme has helped reduce a large number of stray cats,¡¨ Ms Ngan said.
The number of stray cats on the Lamma Island , for example, has dropped by half since the programme started.
However, the programme cannot be extended to cover dogs.
¡§We can carry out the CCCP only because we've obtained permission from the government to feed stray cats. Normally people feeding stray cats can be charged under the Fixed Penalty (Public Cleanliness Offences) Ordinance,¡¨ Ms Ngan said.
¡§It's still illegal to feed stray dogs. If we're not allowed to give them food, we can't bring them back to the centres and sterilise them. We hope that the government can allow us to apply similar programmes to dogs as soon as possible.¡¨
Although the SPCA has been pushing the government hard for solutions, Mr Yim of Love Pet Action is unsatisfied with its work. He said the SPCA had not put enough resources on helping the animals.
¡§Most of their money is spent on holding activities, education and operational costs. Not much money is actually spent on the animals,¡¨ he said.
¡§If we have $10, only $2 will be spent on the shelters' operational costs and the remaining $8 will be spent on the animals directly, such as food and medication.¡¨
According to the 2004-2005 annual report of the SPCA, about $28 million was spent on the staff costs, 56 per cent of its $50 million income.
But Ms Ngan defended her group, saying: ¡§As a large-scale organisation, it's impossible for us to run solely by volunteers. The expenditure on staff is high, but the work we do is to help the animals. Hence, the money is still spent on the animals.¡¨
She said the organisation had many sponsors for the daily running costs. ¡§The government rents the centres to us at very low rates. All of the animal's food is free as they're sponsored.¡¨
Limited resources are, in fact, the problem most private animal shelters face, Mr Yim said. There are currently more than 100 private dog shelters in Hong Kong . Their funding mainly comes from the operators or animal-loving donators.
Many private dog shelters, including Lam Tsuen Kennel in Tai Po have been closed down because of financial difficulties.
¡§Once an animal shelter is closed down, all the animals it kept have no choice but to die,¡¨ Mr Yim said. ¡§So we always try our best to help.¡¨
The 23 dogs of Lam Tsuen Kennel are now being taken care of by four volunteers, together with Love Pet Action.
Sam Lam, one of the volunteers, said it was difficult to rent a place for sheltering the dogs. ¡§Not many landlords are willing to lease a site to us. They're worried that the dogs' bark will disturb the neighbourhood and dog droppings will pollute the environment.¡¨
Mr Lam said the location of a dog shelter had to be kept secret, too. Otherwise, irresponsible pet owners might dump their pets around the location. ¡§Not only we can't afford to keep so many animals, the neighbourhood may also blame us for the emergence of stray dogs and cats in the area.¡¨
Both Mr Yim and Mr Lam called on the government to heavily penalise people for abandoning their pets. To trace back to the pet owners more easily, people should register when they buy dogs or cats to ensure the implantation of identifying chips when their pets are over five months old, they urged.
