The city civic body has launched a stray dog survey across the city, which will be conducted over the next 14 days from Tuesday. The last such survey was done in 2019, when it pegged the stray dog population in the city at 3.1 lakh. “A resurvey is being taken up to assess the success of Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme and anti-rabies vaccine programme from 2019,” Chief Civic Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath said.
The 840 sq.km area under Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been divided into 6,850 micro-zones of 0.5 sq.km area each, of which a random sampling of 20%, or 1,350 micro-zones, have been selected for the stray dog survey, the BBMP said. Care has been taken to ensure these micro-zones selected include all kinds of areas like residential, commercial and industrial ones, sources said.
The exercise will be led by K.P. Suresh, Chief Scientist (Biostatistics), Indian Council of Agricultural Research - National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (ICAR-NIVEDI), Bengaluru. He will lead a team of 100 personnel drawn from Animal Husbandry Department, Government of Karnataka, and Animal Husbandry Department, BBMP, who have been divided into 50 teams of 2 personnel each. The survey will be conducted from 6.00 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. everyday over the next two weeks. Each stray dog in the selected micro-zone will be photographed and their details entered in an in-house app.
Mr. Giri Nath said the survey will provide the civic body with not only the total number of stray dogs in the city, but also ward wise and zone wise numbers, male to female ratio and extent of implementation and success of ABC programme in the city.
