The Ministry of Agriculture yesterday rolled out an app for crowd-sourced sightings of stray dogs, as ever-increasing populations of abandoned pets put pressure on animal control capabilities.
The program was launched to deal with a surge in animal-human conflicts and ecological harm stemming from the rising number of stray dogs in the nation, it said in a statement.
The “dog tracking map” (犬蹤地圖) app lets users submit geotagged photos of stray dogs for the ministry’s algorithms to track wild canine activity, which enables evidence-based analysis required by animal control, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Agriculture
Information on stray activity is key for assessing the risks of dog attacks, canine-related traffic accidents and environmental impact across the nation, the ministry said, adding that conventional methods are costly and time-consuming.
The watch zones for dog attacks and dog-related environmental harm that have been established by city and county governments often lack scientific rigor and consistent standards, it said.
Since Taiwan implemented a no-kill policy for stray dogs and cats in 2017, stray animals have affected the ecosystem, chased or bitten elderly people and children, and caused fatal road traffic accidents involving scooters, it said.
Hotspots for issues between stray dogs and humans or ecological conflicts were previously handled by local governments according to their respective management needs, it said.
While this allowed certain flexibility, there was no unified, science-based analytical framework nationwide, resulting in inconsistent standards across local governments and reduced precision in resource allocation, it said.
The app would overcome these limitations and encourage citizen participation to accumulate data on stray dog groups, it added.
Data furnished by the app would be incorporated into a digital map the ministry plans to launch later this year to serve as a guide for allocating animal management resources, it said.
The map is also expected to bring all local government agencies to the same page and streamline efforts dedicated to reducing the stray population, the ministry said.
Additional reporting by Hollie Younger
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