Don’t be surprised if you see teams of civic personnel roaming the streets of the city taking photos of stray dogs. That’s part of the ongoing census, which will also see geotagging of the animals.
The objective is to get a street-level spatial data of stray dogs in the city for the first time.
Geotagging is non-invasive and will not affect the dogs, said D. Randeep, Additional Commissioner, Health and Solid Waste Management, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
- BBMP teams with the help of an app will take photos of stray dogs and upload them
- Each photo is automatically geotagged, providing the location of the stray dog
- The dog’s sex, status of sterilisation, and whether it is an adult or a puppy will be uploaded
A team of paraveterinary staff and BBMP personnel are going around armed with an app provided by World Wide Veterinary Services Centre, Goa. The photo of the stray, which is uploaded to the app, is automatically geotagged providing the location of the animal.
“As stray dogs are usually territorial by nature, we get a rough street-level distribution of them in the city,” explained S. Shashikumar, Joint Director, Animal Husbandry Department, BBMP.
The surveyors will also enter other details of the dog: its sex, status of sterilisation, and whether it is an adult or a puppy. This information will be also uploaded on the app.
After the survey is completed, teams will resurvey randomly selected wards in every zone, armed with the geotagged dog data in the app to verify the details.
This is the first time such a database is being created. The last available survey of stray dogs in Begnaluru is of 2012. At that time, it recorded 1.37 lakh strays in the city, which according to estimates from activists, has more than doubled to at least 3.5 lakh.
Spatial distribution data of stray dogs will not only help the civic body with its Animal Birth Control programme, but also try to identify the reasons for packs of dogs to dominate certain areas.
“This will enable us to take corrective action. Once the entire city database is in, we can focus on streets or areas with a high population of strays. Usually they are found in large numbers where food is available, either near hotels, meat shops or even garbage dumps,” Dr. Shashikumar said.
ABC programme has come to a halt
The Animal Birth Control programme has come to a standstill in the city as the tenders expired in December 2018. The new tenders are yet to be cleared. “They are almost finalised and work orders are set to be issued,” Dr. Shashikumar said. The new work orders for the programme will be based on the spatial stray dog census, sources said.
