“License to kill” dogs will be given to the regions

The Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, closed to the press, discussed and recommended the adoption in the first reading of a bill that would allow the authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to introduce special rules for the treatment of stray animals on their territory, including the killing of stray dogs. On the same day earlier, the Expert Council under the committee met in open mode: the opinions of the participants in the discussion were divided.

The initiative was submitted to the State Duma by a large group of deputies from different factions: they propose in the current Law “On the Responsible Treatment of Animals” to prescribe the right of the authorities of the Russian regions, if they wish, to carry out “special measures” on their territory for the treatment of homeless animals. General federal rules in such regions can be canceled, and when catching with animals they will be allowed to stand on ceremony. Most of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, said one of the authors and head of the relevant committee, Dmitry Kobylkin (ER), supported the bill. Opening the meeting of the Expert Council on May 11, Mr. Kobylkin explained: there are regions where it is difficult to comply with the requirements of the law due to the small population and remoteness of settlements, shelters cannot be created there, and therefore “people need to be given the right to make decisions on the ground.”

Olga Skudareva, head of the Department of Biological Safety and Sanitary Protection of Rospotrebnadzor, reported that dogs (registered separately only since 2020) account for about 64% of all victims in the country. Over the past five years, an excess of the average Russian indicator of appeals to medical organizations in connection with animal bites has been observed in 16 regions of the Russian Federation, “in the long-term dynamics, there is a general downward trend, but at the same time, there is a significant increase in six regions: these are the Astrakhan, Volgograd, Amur regions, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Republic of Ingushetia, Khabarovsk Territory. As for rabies, since 2018, after animal bites, 19 such cases have been recorded in 13 regions, eight of them on the conscience of dogs.

Andrey Gogin, Deputy Director of the Federal Center for Veterinary Medicine, in turn, recalled that “the reservoir of rabies is wildlife, and this is a vaccine-controlled problem.” Vaccination brings results: if in 2010 more than 2,000 cases of this deadly disease were registered in the country in both wild and domestic animals, then in 2022 – 323 cases.

The first deputy head of the Committee on Ecology, Vladimir Burmatov (ER), said that the committee received more than 20,000 “different in content” appeals from citizens in connection with the bill under discussion. Among the proposals worth discussing, he named the transfer to the regional level of animal registration, since nothing happened at the federal level, and the right to introduce fines for self-walking, because “different regions have different salaries and different situations.”

The Duma Committee on Agrarian Issues was represented by Sergei Lisovsky (ER). “A homeless dog is a wild and dangerous animal, and we must fight it,” he said, “we must euthanize them,” and everything should be prescribed in federal law, and not shift the burden of decision-making on the regions so that “they are bad, and we are good.” “. At the same time, we need to move towards the gradual registration of animals, starting not with “cats”, but just with dogs, even poor regions will “pull” this, and in a few years, when almost all domestic dogs are registered, fines can be introduced, considers United Russia.

Svetlana Kalinina, a member of the Central Headquarters of the ONF, supported Mr. Lisovsky “on many issues”: “human life is much more expensive,” and most regions in the country are subsidized. Yes, the “laundering” of funds allocated for dogs does take place, she admitted, because it is impossible to catch 20 dogs every day in a small town if they don’t catch so many in a big one, but it’s impossible to track everything, and measures need to be taken.

Ilona Bronevitskaya, an adviser to the governor of the Moscow Region on a voluntary basis, does not understand what other powers the governors lack in the current law “On Responsible Treatment”. There were deaths even before he was accepted, she said, in Yakutia, from 2003 to 2016, three children died from dogs, and where there are normal contractors and governors interested in solving the problem, everything works, but “as soon as contractors come in trained only to make a profit, everything is bad.”

Igor Molokov, director of the charitable foundation “Republic of the FRIEND”, recalled the president’s instructions given two years ago: they spoke about the registration of animals, and about shelters, and about responsibility for violating the rules for treating animals. “Since 2018, the law has not been implemented, now the regions are demanding a license to kill them, and we retroactively justify their negligence and lack of enforcement,” he complained …

Mr. Kobylkin asked Deputy Head of the Ministry of Natural Resources Svetlana Radchenko to answer all the comments. The government sent a positive response to the bill, she said, and stipulated that special measures should be applied “in exceptional cases and only in those regions where the situation with stray animals is critical.”

However, there are no such clauses in the text of the bill.