Body to prevent animal cruelty revived in Ooty

Udhagamandalam: At a time when the Nilgiri municipality has hung up its boots on taking steps to regulate the menace caused by the straying of domestic animals onto roads, especially during peak seasons, the revival of the Nilgiri unit of Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), after a slumber of three years, has come as a relief.
With horse riding being a major attraction in the hill station, more than 2,000 horses are owned by riders in the town. Owners often let their animals loose for grazing and feed only the ones they use for riding purposes. The stray horses wander off to roads and footpaths. Similar is the case with buffalo herds, owned by the Toda tribes, which stray into the town, often causing traffic jams.

“We cannot spend 300 a day on a horse which is not used for riding. Also, there is no specific grazing area in Ooty. So horses tend to stray into populated areas,” said Rajan, who owns six horses. Sadiq, another horse owner says there are no facilities for loans and insurance for horses in Tamil Nadu, which could actually help owners maintain the animals better.

But, with the revival of SPCA, locals say the situation will be better now. The body was revived after local volunteers approached the administration on the issue.

Soon after, a meeting was convened by Nagina, an animal lover and nodal officer of the Nilgiris SPCA. It was attended by Nilgiris collector J Innocent Divya, Dr Palanisamy, joint director, animal husbandry department, C Ravi, Ooty municipal engineer and commissioner in- charge and government veterinarians.

“There should be some regulation for domestic animals. It’s the municipality’s responsibility to handle such issues, but it shows helplessness, citing insufficient funds,” Nagina said.

For starters, SPCA with the help of World Veterinary Services, an NGO, on Wednesday conducted a workshop where school children, public and horse owners were sensitised on ways to handle stray and injured animals. Around 25 students and eight horse owners attended the workshop.

Stating that people should come forward to take up the issue of stray animals on roads such as horses, dogs and cattle, Nagina said, “Recently, the Ooty municipality started an initiative to register domestic animals to make it easier to identify their owners when go astray. But the process was not completed.”

As part of its future action plan, SPCA plans to identify safe grazing and riding areas for horses in Ooty. “Taxing of commercial boarding kennels will be carried out by the municipality and the kennel list will be provided by SPCA to the municipality. Horse tokens, registration charges and fines will be handed over by municipality to SPCA and only registered horses will be used for riding purposes. SPCA fund raising events and animal cruelty workshops will also be conducted. SPCA also plans to micro-chip horses. When the action plans are carried out accordingly, there would not be any stray animal menace in the tourist retreat,” Nagina added.

To raise funds for its initiatives, SPCA has arranged a folk show that will feature temple folk singers from Karnataka.