On my first visit to Egypt in the midnineties, the first things that struck me when arriving in Cairo was the amount of garbage and litter strewn everywhere and the number of stray cats roaming the streets. Indeed the sight of a dead cat lying in the gutter going totally unheeded by the local citizens was not a pretty sight for a foreign animalloving visitor. And these two factors are intrinsically linked in that the garbage seemed to be the main food source for these feral animals. Sad to say, 15 years later the situation is pretty much the same, if not worse. It's difficult to know the actual number of stray dogs in Cairo and the surrounding suburbs. Estimates are wide-ranging, but the popular belief is that it runs into tens of thousands. The feral cat population appears to be much larger, maybe two million. The situation is quite plain, to put it mildly, there is an overabundance of street dogs and cats and something needs to be done about it. Atime of change During this decade, Egypt has undergone rapid economic development and along with it the animal protection movement. There are now 10 shelters operating in the country and for Egypt the good news is that Egyptian-led animal protection organisations now take their place alongside the European and internationally-funded humane societies. Organisations such as SPARE (Society for the Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt) founded in 2001, ESAF (Egyptian Society of Animal Friends) 2002, and ESMA (Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals) 2007. And Egypt is regionally leading the way through MENAW (Middle East Network for Animal Welfare), which was founded in 2007 by local lawyer Ahmed el Sherbiny, who is also the President of ESAF, and Bob Blumberg from the USA (a member of ESAF while living in Cairo). The method currently in use to control animal population in Egypt, eradication by routine poisoning and shooting is frankly a bit 'out of date' these days and ultimately ineffective and not inline with the method that other countries with the same problem have successfully adopted, or with world humane sentiments. After more than 25 years of eradication in Egypt, it is fairly obvious that this method simply isn't working and is essentially just a "quick fix". It is world-widely accepted today that the only effective and morally acceptable method of animal population control is TNR or Trap-Neuter-Return. Many countries have now dropped eradication in favour of TNR and there are plenty of statistics available to testify to the success of this method. Quite simply the animals are captured, taken to a vet to be neutered or spayed, and once recovered are returned to the place they were found. They are also vaccinated against rabies before they are returned. It has been estimated that in any given area sterilisation in the 75 per cent range is the target generally accepted as producing zero population growth, and anti-rabies vaccination penetration in the range of 75 per cent has been found to produce "herd immunity" against rabies. I spoke to Bob Blumberg, a co-founder of MENAW. He stated “Sterilisation is the only feasible way to control population, mass killing doesn't work, nature abhors a vacuum. If all the dogs in an area are killed, within a short time, dogs from neighboring areas come in, because there is more space, less competition for food, less competition for mates. and before long, you may have a worse problem than you had originally. And it's important that the dogs be returned to the exact spot where caught, that's their territory, and they will then guard their territory against other dogs, who may be unvaccinated and unsterilised, so you end up with a healthy, stable dog population”. Commenting on the fact that the garbage on the streets support the problem, he said: “Garbage pickup is a key factor, if no food, the dogs will move on”. Most of the Egyptian animal societies advocate TNR and Mona Kahlil of ESMA and Ahmed el-Sherbiny of ESAF have worked tirelessly to provide spay/neuter services for Cairo's cats and dogs. They are also developing education programmes, particularly for children as they believe this is the key to shaping the attitudes of future generations towards animals. For the last four years through Ahmed el-sherbiny and his law firm, they have been trying to get the Government to cooperate with them and to stop the traditional shooting and poisoning and let them get on with implementing TNR throughout Egypt. In 2006, legislation was submitted and also an online petition to push this legislation through Parliament quicker was presented, but so far they have been met with very little response to the point where ESAF and ESMA are now taking legal action against the Ministry of Agriculture in an attempt to be heard. A lawsuit has been filed and Dina Zulfikar, a leading independent activist has called on the Government to end immediately the policy of poisoning stray animals. A second lawsuit has been filed against the owner of Cairo's largest pet shop after ESAF received numerous complaints about the conditions live animals were being kept in. TNR in Cairo I spoke to Mona Khalil the co-founder and treasurer and spokesperson for ESMA and asked her about ESMA and what they were doing regarding TNR. “ESMA is the youngest of all animal organisations in Egypt,” she told me. “We were established in December 2007, but we run the largest shelter of them all, incorporating almost six hundred animals, dogs and cats. We do treat other animals from the nearby rural area where we work for free. Our work for TNR is non-stop; all these numbers entering our shelter are sterilised. We did work on the area, where we exist and did sterilisation in the area around us, about 6km all around. There is a major decrease in the number of puppies there. We do several hundred TNR operations every year. we did not do the final count up for this year, but between cats and dogs we can exceed 400 operations for non-owned strays”. On October 8, this year, ESAF conducted a TNR programme in Dahab City in south Sinai. Fifty eight cats and dogs were operated on over five days. South Sinai vet department agreed not to kill any animals in the area covered by the THR scheme and the local authorities and municipality police have also been asked not to shoot any animals. The main objective of this project is to demonstrate to the Government and the public in Egypt that there is an alternative to killing and that co-operation between Government, volunteers and NGOs can be beneficial to animal welfare. The project was financed by Vier Pfoten international. Dahab local City Council and South Sinai Vet Department have agreed to continue the TNR programme after three to four months. To run an effective TNR programme in a city the size of Cairo is a huge task. l asked Mona Khalil where the finances would come from for a project on this scale. “On the large scale, we want to work we need help from big organisations and we need the people that really care about animals to donate towards this. Speaking for ESMA, we cannot take this on its own with the large number of animals we have and all the finances involved in keeping a shelter of this size. For example, we are working now with the management of Gezira club to do something about the stray cats problem inside the club. We hope the calibre of members of the Gezira club would first make them understand what we are doing and encourage those of them, who are animal lovers to help donate towards the cost of operations”. Finally, I asked Mona about her own personal feelings about this situation. “I feel depressed and disappointed. In the past years we have achieved a big move for animal welfare, but the continued regime of eradication of strays and the dedication of new budgets to this matter is really making us feel the mission is very hard. But we took it on ourselves in ESMA never to give up because you can never give up on innocent souls and because society is not educated about animal rights or welfare. it is a long way but we hope we can at least pave the way of any followers so they do not have to suffer what we are suffering now. But TNR is the one and only solution for the stray animal problem in Egypt.” Afuture full of hope These caring organisations along with others are pushed to the limit handling and caring for sick or injured animals, rescuing and finding homes for strays, and they are struggling against all the odds to make it a better place for the country's animals. These people are the real heroes and they will never give up and deserve our help and support. And due to their efforts the future does look a lot brighter for our animal friends. Although foreign funding and action is still vitally important to the country, its these Egyptian organisations, who understand the true nature of the problem here and how it relates to Islam, they have lived with it every day of their lives, and they are the ones who will ultimately change things for the better.
