Mon, Jun 08, 2026 page3

• Sterilization efforts lower abandoned dog rates by 88%

  POOR CARE: An investigation found that 45% of outdoor dogs were owned by people who viewed them as ‘tools,’ while 70% of them have never taken their pet to the vet

  • By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter
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  The rates of puppies entering shelters across Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan and Keelung have plunged by at least 88 percent after high-intensity sterilization was applied, Faith for Animals data showed.

  The rate in Hsinchu county and city has also decreased by 77 percent since the method was adopted three years ago, it showed.

  Faith for Animals chief executive director Kuo Hsuan (郭璇) said her group collaborated with the New Taipei City Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office on conducting high-intensity sterilization from 2017.

  

  Stray dogs are pictured in an undated photograph.

  Photo: Taipei Times

  An investigation showed that free-roaming dogs in New Taipei City dropped by 48 percent to 17,000 dogs in 2024 from about 39,000 dogs in 2017, she said.

  Ministry of Agriculture data also showed that the population of free-roaming dogs fell by 11.34 percent nationwide from 2022 to 2024.

  In Taipei, complaints about free-roaming dogs decreased by 92 percent to 384 reports last year from 4,925 reports in 2014, Kuo said.

  “All the data showed that the total number of free-roaming dogs is declining and so are their breeding rates, with reduced human-dog conflicts,” she said.

  Data from the six administrative areas in northern Taiwan that have applied high-intensity sterilization showed similar downward trends, showing that the method is effective in reducing the population of free-roaming dogs, she added.

  The method worked mainly because dogs kept outdoors — chained or free-roaming — were identified and sterilized, Kuo said.

  Faith for Animals was commissioned by the ministry in 2024 to investigate dogs kept outdoors across Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, and Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, she said.

  Investigation results showed that 45 percent of owners of such dogs considered them as “tools,” Kuo said, adding that up to 70 percent of them had never taken their dogs to a veterinarian, while 52 percent said they had allowed their dogs to breed.

  More than 60 percent of the dogs sterilized in northern Taiwan over the past decade were outdoor dogs with an owner, Kuo said.

  Those poorly managed dogs has been the main source of free-roaming dogs, she said, calling for enhanced law enforcement against dog abandonment.

  The benefits of high-intensity sterilization have been demonstrated in northern Taiwan, while the method has just been initiated or has not yet been applied in central and southern Taiwan, Kuo said.

  High-intensity sterilization is different from the trap-neuter-return approach, as the former requires door-to-door surveys and a regional sterilization rate of 80 percent or more for female dogs, she said.

  Asked whether sterilized free-roaming dogs would move to lowland hill areas and affect wildlife survival, Kuo said dogs rarely migrate long distances unless there is a drastic change in their current habitat.

  What caused concern is the dogs originally living around ecologically sensitive areas, while their removal would open space for immigration of other dogs in surrounding areas, she said.

  High-intensity sterilization remains the most effective approach to block the source of stray dogs, Kuo said, adding that the next step would be restricting the acquisition of dogs.

  Department of Animal Welfare Deputy Director Chen Chung-hsing (陳中興) said the ministry would revise regulations to authorize local government to reject inappropriate neutering exemption applications.

  The ministry has also launched a community-based scheme from this year to subsidize local high-intensity sterilization projects in central and southern Taiwan, he said.
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