The Caravan — February 2018

8 THE CARAVAN

/ bhanu sridharan

On a windy afternoon in July, Mool-
chand walked into Kibber, a village in
the Spiti Valley in northeastern Him-
achal Pradesh, following closely at the
heels of a foreign tourist. “Moolchand
ji,” a passerby called out. “Izzat toh
deni chahiye”—you should show some
respect. A group of people, waiting for
the daily bus out of Kibber, laughed.
Moolchand, a friendly and trusting dog,
is regarded with affection by tourists
and tolerated by villagers, even when
he wanders near the sheep pens.
But the treatment he receives is
rare. In this corner of the Himalayas,
dogs are entangled in a difficult con-
flict with locals. Spiti has long been a
pastoral economy, and it depends on
livestock—sheep, goats, horses, yak,
donkeys and dzo—to provide resources
such as meat, manure and wool. A
study published in January 2017, in
the Swedish journal Ambio, found that
feral dogs were responsible for a little
over 63 percent of the livestock deaths
in Spiti, and 80 percent of those that
died were sheep and goats. Chandrima
Home, a doctoral student at the Ashoka
Trust for Research in Ecology and the
Environment, Bengaluru, and the lead
researcher of the study, found that over
the span of one year, dogs had killed
238 livestock in 25 villages. Although
sterilisation was thought to be the
best way to tackle this problem, local
enthusiasm for participating in sterili-
sation camps has dwindled. According
to Home, culling measures need to be
considered. “I think we have to come
to terms with the fact that we have to
physically remove some dogs from the
landscape,” she said, “but it has to be

done systematically and in a humane

ma n ner.”

On 14 and 15 July, the animal hus-

bandry department and veterinary

hospital in Kaza—the subdivisional

headquarters of the Spiti Valley—host-

ed an animal birth-control programme,

an annual camp arranged to sterilise

some dogs in the town, where the ca-

nine population was growing rapidly. It

was a collaboration between two NGO.

Funds for medicines were provided by

Ecosphere, which works on tourism

and local livelihoods, and four staff

members from the Nature Conserva-

tion Foundation, or NCF, which works

on snow leopard conservation, had

come down from Kibber to assist in the

proceedings. Led by Tanzin Thinley, a

field coordinator at NCF, they cheerful-

ly sedated, cleaned and prepared dogs

for the operations, while two vets from

the Animal Husbandry Department

performed the surgeries.

When I visited on the first day, the

mood at the camp was almost festive.

Cups of Rasna were passed around to

organisers and onlookers, and a colour-

ful tent under a willow tree functioned

as a makeshift operating theatre. But

the success of the camp hinged precari-

ously on the residents of Kaza catch-

ing dogs and bringing them in. When

Although sterilisation was

the preferred method for

dealing with the killing of

livestock by stray dogs,

local enthusiasm for

sterilisation camps has

dwindled.

w w

THE LEDE

A Pack of Troubles

How Spiti is coping with its stray-dog problem

/ Communities

Thinley returned to his home in Kibber,

I asked him how many dogs were ster-

ilised in Kaza this year. “A hundred,”

he said, and the other NCF staff burst

into laughter. “Actually it was 12,” he

admitted with a small smile. “Nobody

brought any dogs on the second day.”

The first sterilisation camp took

place in 2013. In preparation for it, the

village council in Kaza instructed every

household to catch at least one dog, or

pay a fine of R500 if they failed to do

so. Ajay Bijoor, who manages NCF’s

conservation projects in Spiti, told

me over the phone that 102 dogs were

sterilised during the first camp and

around 326 dogs were sterilised in the

annual camps held between 2013 and

2017. In the last two years, the number
      has steadily reduced. Only 35 dogs were
      sterilised in 2016. Bijoor estimated the
      stray dog population to be between
      700 and 900 today, while Home’s study
      suggested that there are at least 571.
      “Sterilised dogs still have a lifespan of
      at least eight to ten years,” Bijoor said.
      “They continue to hunt livestock and
      wildlife during this period, and this
      has made local people lose interest in
      sterilisation.” Yet it is still the preferred
      method of dealing with the problem.
      With dogs in Kaza, Bijoor explained,
      sterilisation might be an adequate mea-
      sure, but villages where dogs reside in
      pastures or the jungle might need a dif-
      ferent strategy.
      Another dilemma faces the people
      of Spiti—a predominantly Buddhist
      society—who feel that killing dogs goes
      against their faith. In 2014, students
      from the Kachen Dugyal Memorial Girl’s
      Hostel in Kaza made a short film, urg-
      ing locals to co-operate with the annual
      sterilisation drive. In one scene, a young
      student interviews Phunchok Namgial,
      an elderly resident, who claims that he
      sold his stock of sheep and goats because
      he could not bear to lose any more of
      them to dogs. “I feel very angry when
      I lose my animals because of the losses
      I face,” he says. “I am old and I cannot