That's just ridiculuous.

Good.

It is clear:
There is a problem with feral animals on Lamma, especially feral dogs.
They should be controlled. If TNR is not working then there should be a cull.
This is a simple question of health and quality of life for every resident, and of for safety for children, elderly, and pets ioncluding of course pet dogs..

I would go further. If you have to have a dog, at least observe some basic hygiene. Pet dogs should be on a leash, kept out of restaurants and places that sell food, and any fouling cleaned up immediately by the owner.

Tolerance is great, dogs are great companions, but hygiene is part of the overall quality of life - part of the reason we all live here, whether we like dogs or not.

TNR has never officially been tried here. What's going on now is apparently some people trying to DIY, but without any official support or sanction. It's being undermined by the feeding of feral dogs without restraint by either the same or another informal group.

Whereas "culling" is already the govt policy and has been for the last century and failed to work.
FEHD sends out teams of dog catchers in response to complaints. They are simply unable to catch wild dogs when they can disappear into the scrubby hillsides.

It seems no one involved is able to think it through and persist in advocating "solutions" that manifestly do not work.
"Send them all to another island". "Cull them".
Fine. First you have to catch them. How? Set a bunch of hunters with rifles wandering around Lamma? Napalm?

I can guess the civil servants are fearful that if they support TNR, and then there is even one dog attack later by a released dog, they will be blamed. Whereas if ten people are mauled by wild dogs, they can send out a team to wander in the countryside for a day and say they "did their job".

Now there's a potential for an explosive situation with resentment rising about the wild dogs. Someone might start doing a "cull" vigilante style by other means which would inevitably kill pet dogs as well.

The whole dog thing on Lamma is like many environmental irritants in Hong Kong -- that is, it is out if control. When I read these posts it appears there is no solution to the overpopulation of dogs on Lamma. But I have to add that clearly the responsibility lies with dog owners and/or feeders of dogs. I don't have a dog and I don't feed dogs. The way things are on Lamma, I let dogs go on their way, standing my ground, as they do behave like dogs, and though I might say a friendly word to them, I never pat them. I also learned to avoid direct eye contact with certain dogs, as one day a dog that I had been looking at, came out of the ocean (at Power Station Beach) and bit me. That's the ONE bite I got, but the barking is going on right now. I mean literally as I write this. That's why a non-dog owner gets a bit fed up with "dog-lovers" as there are too many barking dogs, and if you love your dog, you wouldn't want it to make a noise like that.

So whether you stand for culling, or neutering, or you believe or don't believe in the effectiveness of either, it is really the responsibility of people who own more than one dog on Lamma to start a registry of the dog population (at any one time), to organise patrols that collect and dispose of dog shit, and to begin a grant for neutering strays and the dogs of lower income families. Would I want to do that? No, I would rather just not own a dog. But I do believe those steps would spread much good will amongst the human population of Lamma.

Some of us have been working on this problem for a dozen years or more. The above posts are obviously from newcomers with little understanding of the situation. I shall try briefly to clarify.

The dogs you meet around Yung Shue Wan, Power Station Beach, etc are all owned dogs. Lamma Animal Welfare Centre and LAP have already identified all the dogs in North Lamma and spoken with the owners who, unfortunately, refuse to curtail their dogs' freedom. There have been many educational campaigns, posters, leaflets, etc but some dog owners are impervious to advice. If these dogs bark at you or bite you or shit on the path, you should seek a remedy from the owners, via the police if necessary.

When we talk about the merits of TNR, we are not talking about the dogs you see. We are talking about the hill dogs who live truly feral lives in the hills. They generally don't bother anyone except for coming down at night to the beaches to look for food that has been left as litter. In North Lamma there are only about 6 or 7 of these dogs. There used to be more. From 2002 to 2008, we started doing TNR with the approval of AFCD and SPCA and the numbers came down significantly. Unfortunately AFCD suddenly decided that TNR was illegal and we had to put our efforts into defending court cases instead of doing TNR. Some of the dogs left North Lamma and started to live on the Lo So Shing Beach - they did this because a group of LSS villagers regularly put food out for them there. Having won our court cases, we wanted to do TNR at LSS but we were persuaded to wait because SPCA/AFCD wanted to do a trial of TNR there. We waited for years and in the meantime the LSS dogs multiplied until they became a real nuisance - this thread is about these dogs, not the owned dogs in Yung Shue Wan. When it was at last decided not to go ahead with the trial, we started (last year) to do TNR at LSS. We made little headway because the dog feeders would not allow the dogs to get hungry enough to take the bait in the traps. We are currently waiting for the villagers to get their act together. All this time AFCD has been attempting to cull these dogs - their Catch and Kill policy. This has obviously been an abject failure - decades of trying to eliminate the dogs and there are more than ever.
TNR will work if we can ever get the various parties to cooperate. It is the only tactic that can work.

The most recent SCMP Letter to the Editor, the currently last public word on this topic, from the AFCD:

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

So AFCD has a TNR plan, but the District Councillors won't let them implement it anywhere.
Everyone covering their arse. and nothing will improve.

This is precisely why the animal NGOs need to get on with it themselves. It is obvious that the Government is never going to get the dog situation under control.
Below is the latest SCMP letter on the subject.
John.


South China Morning Post - Letter to Editor 18th February 2014
http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/art ... ry-18-2014
I refer to the letter by Dr May Chow of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department ("Trial will help show the way to control stray dog population", January 30).
"Trap, neuter, return" (TNR) does work, as proven over and over again by voluntary animal welfare organisations throughout Hong Kong. "The way forward", as Dr Chow so quaintly puts it, is to stop the problem at source.
Recently, animal welfare groups were invited to make submissions to the Legislative Council in relation to TNR and the handling of dog cases. Their message was loud and clear: allow TNR but, more importantly, enforce legislation regarding lawful and responsible dog ownership.
The reasons for the stray dog crisis in Hong Kong are well known. It has been allowed to grow to alarming proportions by the intransigence of the very department tasked with animal management.
The department has, for far too long, taken a passive approach to enforcement of legislation that requires dogs over five months old to be licensed, vaccinated and microchipped. They are also required to be under proper control.
Visit any New Territories village or the outlying islands and it will become obvious that these regulations are routinely flouted and dogs are allowed to roam freely and breed indiscriminately.
Add to this the proliferation of dogs kept on building and construction sites, and at storage yards and warehouses, and subsequently "dumped" when projects are completed, and it's not difficult to understand where our strays originate.
Who can forget the Disneyland scandal, where the "guard" dogs left behind were to be rounded up by agricultural department staff? And history repeated itself upon construction of the Lantau cable car to the Big Buddha - a hotbed of uncontrolled breeding and a source of concern to Protection of Animals Lantau South. We estimate that in 2013 alone, upwards of 15 mature dogs and more than 25 puppies were collected in south Lantau by the department, with a further 31 puppies taken in by the local shelter.
Finally, there is the ease of abandonment. Keepers of "loosely owned" dogs without microchips go unchecked and even when dogs are picked up with a traceable owner they are rarely penalised.
So endless time has been spent to debate the merits or otherwise of TNR and arrive at a consensus, when those of us actually in the field have already "shed light on the way forward" and can only hope that the department take their heads out of the sand long enough to spot it.
Jacqui Green
Protection of Animals Lantau South (PALS).

SCMP : FYI

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 29 March, 2014, 3:25am

http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/art ... stray-dogs

SCMP Editorial
Most Popular
Attack on shopkeeper highlights problem of stray dogs

Last week in Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma, there was another attack by an uncontrolled, stray dog. This time, a local female shopkeeper was so viciously attacked that she had to be taken to a local hospital for emergency treatment.

This is not the first of these attacks and they will continue as long as uncontrolled dogs are allowed to wander freely in Sok Kwu Wan and Lo So Shing, both on southern Lamma.

Dr May Chow, acting principal veterinary officer of the Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department, wrote about a trap, neuter, return (TNR) trial ("Trial will help show the way to curb stray dog numbers", January 30).

Dr Chow said that under the trial TNR program stray dogs would be "neutered, microchipped and vaccinated before being released" back into the general population. Herein lies the problem. These are not domesticated animals, but rather untrained, uncontrolled, stray dogs left to their own devices.

What Dr Chow fails to address is who will be liable when one or more of these dogs viciously attacks a child, for example. The answer is the SAR government.

Why these officials have not learned from the TNR program that was launched in Lo So Shing, which has created a massive, aggressive stray dog population, boggles the mind. It would be enlightening to understand why the stray dogs under the department's trial TNR program would be any more domesticated than those wandering our paths and beaches?

To put it simply, there is a stray dog crisis in southern Lamma of biblical proportions, propagated not only by a failed TNR program but also as a result of the department's apathetic and ineffective efforts to enforce its stated catch-and-removal methods.

Rather than focus on unproven experimental techniques, why doesn't the department simply get back to basics, do its job and clean up the aggressive stray dog population haunting southern Lamma?

Last month, the residents of Lo So Shing organized a petition that was delivered to the local office of the Lands Department calling for the removal of more than 50 stray dogs. The people have spoken, and still there has been listless inaction. The result of this negligence, of course, was the brutal and vicious attack by a stray and uncontrolled dog on the shopkeeper.

Just Sayin.. TNR is snake oil, beware those with forked tongue, they want your money and pray on your sympathy.

BTW there was a meeting in Sok Kwu Wan today.. My neighbor witnesses the aggressive behavior/attack on one of the YSW participants and his 2 dogs as he attempted to walk home on the "Family Trail" these dogs were part of the same uncontrolled pack animals that have killed, bitten or maimed companion pets and humans throughout the SKW and LoSo area.

If it ain't on a leash,its in a pack, and no owner is in sight. THAT IS TNR.. Stop it before it comes to your street.

Thanks for the inspiration to make this scheme transparent.

Just to confirm what TNR feeding accomplishes

The text you pasted in was just a letter (from you?), not an SCMP editorial as the title suggests.



The "attack on the shopkeeper" is just single event. Who knows if the dog is a feral or just one some jerk lets run around off leash.
The dog wasn't a "TNR" dog, as there isn't any TNR program in effect.

The government has been trying to do exactly what you demand, catching and killing wild dogs, and failing to make much difference for the last 50 years. TNR has never been tried in Hong Kong.

A real TNR program would reduce the number of strays, so there would be fewer attacks. And neutered dogs are less aggressive.



Someone saw a wild pig 100 metres from where someone had left food two weeks before. Therefore, TNR is evil???
WTF logic is that?

Feeding wild dogs indiscriminately is not TNR anyway.

I don't know why you go on about TNR when there isn't any chance of a TNR programme here.
The local councillors will never allow TNR on Lamma.
Their solution is to cover south Lamma with concrete. Then we'll just have real estate dealers and rats to deal with.

In the meantime, you'll just have more wild dogs and dog catchers turning up to catch a few every now and then, while the dog feeders cause a population explosion. Those are the idiots you should blame, not TNR which has never been given a chance to show whether it would work or not.

Slightly off topic but relevant because it has worked for cats here and its good to know it is working in Washington...

Given the chance it would probably work well with our dogs as well! As you will recognise, I am in full agreement with the programme.

http://news.yahoo.com/fur-flies-us-gets ... 14088.html

Here is a very brief extract:

For decades, standard procedure has been to round them up and euthanize them, but in recent years the trend has swung towards TNR -- trapping, then neutering, then returning cats to the places they were captured.

"Ultimately, our goal is to sterilize all outdoor cats and have them pass on through attrition," Scott Giacoppo, vice president for external affairs at the Washington Humane Society, told AFP.

"So if our plan or our goal happens, there won't be any feral cats."

"Unfortunately, many communities in the United States still continue to trap and kill today, and those communities are not experiencing any change" in numbers of feral cats, Holtz told AFP.