Moscow’s 26,000 Stray Dogs to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: Will You Save Us?
Three of Moscow's estimated 26,000 stray dogs lie in Red Square on a warm spring day in 2007. (Photo: Denis Sinyakov/Reuters)
Dissatisfied that city officials have shelved, and not permanently abandoned, a plan to send Moscow’s 26,000 stray dogs to a facility on the outskirts of town, 50 animal rights activists took to the streets Wednesday and voiced their dissent to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“We’ve come here today to ask him to protect Moscow’s dogs,” said Yelena Nadyozhkina, an activist with Russian group Save the Animals, reports the Associated Press.
Moscow's plan would have rounded up strays and sent them to a camp in the Yaroslavl region, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of the city.
Its critics say the move would be deadly for the animals and create an atmosphere for the misappropriation of city funds.
"It's far enough from Moscow that we won't be able to go there, observe them or control how the animals are fed and taken care of," said Lyudmila Fokina, a volunteer at one of Moscow's animal shelters. "The animals will just die there. We won't know about it, and the money will continue to finance the facility."
For every 300 Muscovites, there’s a homeless pooch wandering the streets of Russia’s capital city. To put that another way, there are 84 strays per every square mile.
The exceedingly large number of strays can, in part, be blamed on the power of democracy, says ABC News.
During Soviet days, stray dogs were simply destroyed with no mercy. In the new post-communist Russia, citizens have more of a say, and because the multitude of pet lovers now voice their objection to elimination, the problem of roaming dogs has become much more complex for Moscow authorities.
Writing last year in the Financial Times, Susan Sternthal describes the stray scene:
You see them everywhere. They lie around in the courtyards of apartment complexes, wander near markets and kiosks, and sleep inside metro stations and pedestrian passageways. You can hear them barking and howling at night.
According to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, urban living has “driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits.” He groups the city’s strays into four classes: “guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.”
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