Europe4strays first trip to Romania feedback June 2016
The population of stray dogs is unheeded by most of the Romanian citizens, we saw many strays roaming on busy roads completely ignored by the people and left to starve or to be run over by a car.
We witnessed several dead bodies on the side roads which can be an emotionally distressful experience and hard to forget once you are back home.
Lots of Romanians just dump their pets in the streets when they don't want them anymore. In the big cities like Bucharest these poor dogs will be brutally caught by the cruel Romanian dogcatchers
to end up locked in these extermination camps called "Public Shelters".
Despite to our short time in existence Europe4strays has been able to change the fate of several Romanian dogs where some of them have been adopted abroad and some of them are still waiting in
Romania for their lucky star.
They are accomodated in private refuges selected on the basis of strict criteria
(veterinary care available near or on site, guarded facilitie in order to avoid fights and stolen dogs, daily food and water, exercise, socialisation and an active adoption program) matching our
requirements to ensure our sponsored dogs have the basic amenities in a secured environment.
We have visited these private facilities and met our dogs for the first time. We could see our dogs (some of them featured on our
adoption page) well cared, fed and getting more and more confident toward humans which for us is an important step in the rescue process.
Strays of Romania begging for food to the drivers
We are encouraged to keep on with our campaign for the Romanian strays, and as we believe they have the right to live we will continue in rescuing and providing financial help to the Romanian
private refuges hosting our dogs. The financial help comes mainly from our fundraiser and our personal money but as funds are never sufficient
we are constantly looking for new fundraising ideas.
It is a big challenge but we think that together, we can make a real difference in the life of the Romanian dogs.
Thanks to the kind collaboration of Carmen Arsene, President of The National Federation for Animal Protection Romania, we are
able to provide updated figures of strays in Romania:
We would estimate about 6.1 millions of dogs in whole Romania from which 4.5 millions dogs (80%) are dogs with owners in rural areas,
1.1 million are dogs with owners in cities and around 500,000 are stray dogs.
The positive results of spaying/neutering campaign, meaning visible reducing of the stray dog population, are visible only in protected areas where no migration of dogs are and where either the
most dogs with owners are sterilised or there is no high abandoment.
The positive results of sterilisation also in the areas where other stray dogs are infiltrated (resulted by migration or abandoment) consist in reducing the number of deaths of puppies (as they
do not birth anymore), more peace in the local citizens comunities.
There are between 95 and 120 public shelters but only a part of them are authorised by Sanitary Veterinary Directions.
Unfortunately none of the public shelters can be considered as good examples but if we should name few of them for the best caring staff we could name Targu Mures and Oradea.There are also public
shelters where the local animal welfare organisations are involved, as Brasov, for example, and the situation is good.
Some of the rights and duties of non -profit organizations ( NGOs )in Romania are:
- According the law 205/2004 regarding the animal protection the representatives of the animal protection organizations have the right to monitor the enforcement of this law in cooperation with
the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority and the Police.
- According the OUG 155/2001 regarding the stray dog management the representatives of NGOs have the right to participate at the activities of capturing, sheltering, vaccination, deworming,
sterilisation, adoption, reclaiming; interdiction to NGOs representatives to participate at the actions mentioned might be amended from 10.000 lei to 20.000 lei (2300 – 4600 euro)
- Depending the statute the NGOs might have the rights to make legal actions in Court regarding the cruelties against animals even if the animals injured are not belong to the respective
NGOs
- NGOs can receive donations
The Romanian governement does not provide any kind of help to NGOs.
The NGOs cannot be provided with food for free from the Government! But an NGO being an authorised animal shelter can benefit by food not used from markets.
We could conclude our report by recalling that without a massive campaign of sterilization the tragedy of stray dogs in Romania will not come to an end.