Around 20 per cent of the victims of stray animal bites are children, and they account for 30-60 per cent of deaths

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Anand Neelakantan

Updated on: 

10 May 2025, 5:30 pm

4 min read

• https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/columns/2025/May/11/forget-strays-the-government-must-first-keep-its-human-citizens-safe

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Three children have died in Kerala in the last month from rabies. All of them had taken anti-rabies vaccination, yet that didn’t prevent their young lives from being snuffed out cruelly by the dreaded infection. India has 36 per cent of all rabies death cases in the world. India witnessed 22 lakh dog bite cases and over 5 lakh other animal bite cases, including monkey bite cases, and rabies claims an annual average of 21,000 deaths in India.

Around 20 per cent of the victims of stray animal bites are children, and they account for 30-60 per cent of deaths. The statistics paint a grim picture of vulnerability, particularly in rural areas with scarce medical facilities. Indian roads are free for all, a chaotic ecosystem where humans and animals compete for space. Cows, dogs, monkeys, goats, buffaloes, and many other stray animals roam around our streets, blocking traffic and causing many unreported accidents. These animals, often malnourished and territorial, create hazards not just through confrontation but also by causing vehicles to swerve suddenly or brake without warning. Rabies is just one of the problems in a long list of public health and safety concerns that plague India’s streets, where zoonotic diseases and traffic accidents intertwine to form a dangerous cocktail of death and accidents.

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The stray dog problem is directly linked to our civic sense and how our local bodies handle waste. The food trash that litters most of our cities is a breeding ground for street dogs. They grow and multiply rapidly around these makeshift food sources, establishing territories near dumpsters and restaurant back alleys. Municipal workers, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of garbage, often leave piles uncollected for days, creating perfect scavenging spots for packs of dogs. These areas become their hunting grounds, where they teach their pups to survive on discarded scraps and rotting refuse, perpetuating a cycle that has existed for generations.

Some irresponsible citizens feed street dogs and allow them to multiply, ignoring the perils they cause to the general public. These well-meaning but misguided individuals often leave food in plastic bags or paper plates at street corners, creating informal feeding stations that draw more and more strays to residential areas. Adopting a street dog and taking care of it throughout its life is undoubtedly an act of great compassion, but throwing a few biscuits or leftover food for street dogs and leaving them to multiply is sheer irresponsibility. Such casual feeding practices give these animals just enough sustenance to survive and breed, while doing nothing to address their need for proper medical care, vaccinations, or population control, ultimately contributing to the growing crisis on city streets.

India has an estimated 6.2 crore street dogs, or four dogs per hundred people. The number of other street animals, wild or feral, remains largely uncounted—a statistic lost in the vastness of the subcontinent. It is estimated that around 50 lakh stray cows are wandering the dusty roads and urban centres of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh alone. The effectiveness of sterilisation programmes has proven woefully limited, their reach extending to only a fraction of the burgeoning animal population. Though courts and governments have consistently favoured non-lethal measures like sheltering or sterilisation— often championing compassion over pragmatism—the problem has only been exacerbated over the years, growing more intractable with each passing season. The courts and animal rights activists have frequently and passionately intervened whenever culling of street dogs has been discussed, effectively preventing such measures through legal challenges and public outcry, but it seems that no one is prepared to shoulder the moral responsibility for the deaths of innocent people mauled in unprovoked attacks.

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The ban on cow slaughter has made it financially unviable for farmers to keep non-productive cattle, leading to widespread abandonment across both rural and urban areas, and the stray cow population is going to explode in the coming years, potentially reaching crisis levels in major cities and agricultural zones. One pragmatic solution, though partial and riddled with ethical and practical issues and likely to face resistance from religious groups and animal welfare advocates, is to use the street animals as fodder for carnivorous animals in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries, thus aiding the natural food cycle while simultaneously addressing two pressing issues. This approach would help manage the burgeoning stray population and reduce the significant costs zoos incur in feeding their predator species. Often, it becomes a moral dilemma in choosing the life of one species over another, with advocates on both sides passionately defending their positions while struggling to find common ground. But when no one is shedding a drop of tear for millions of chickens, goats, buffaloes, pigs, fish and other animals that daily meet their end in processing facilities worldwide, why should a false sense of compassion prevent us from culling street dogs or cows that pose a threat to human life? The selective nature of such moral outrage, applied inconsistently across species, reveals the complex and often contradictory relationship humans maintain with different animals, shaped more by cultural conditioning than rational assessment of harm and benefit. The fundamental duty of a government must first be towards the safety and wellbeing of its human citizens, rather than to the street dogs or cows, however sympathetic their plight might be.

1. >
2. birds

South Korean health officials inspect a rice field frequented by migrating birds in Seosan, 130 kilometers (78 miles) southwest of Seoul, on November 24, 2006. 

(Photo: Jeon Young-Han/AFP via Getty Images)

Scapegoating Wild Birds Won’t Solve Avian Flu: We Need Radical Farming Reform

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence.

Peter Stevenson

May 10, 2025Common Dreams

For migratory and other wild birds, bird flu is a disaster. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, states that 169 million U.S. poultry have been affected by highly pathogenic bird flu since January 2022. Yet worldwide, tens of millions of wild birds have died of bird flu—which has also spread to mammals, including over 1,000 US. dairy herds.

Saturday 10 May is World Migratory Bird Day, a global event for raising awareness of migratory birds and issues related to their conservation. The poultry industry and governments like to blame wild birds for bird flu. However, the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds—which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) stresses that wild birds are in fact the victims of highly pathogenic bird flu; they do not cause it. As a recent study states, “This panzootic did not emerge from nowhere, but rather is the result of 20 years of viral evolution in the ever-expanding global poultry population.”

Until recently, the bird flu viruses that circulate naturally in wild birds were usually of low pathogenicity; they generally caused little harm to the birds. It is when it gets into industrial poultry sheds—often on contaminated clothing, feed, or equipment—that low pathogenic avian influenza can evolve into dangerous highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down.

Industrial poultry production, in which thousands of genetically similar, stressed birds are packed into a shed, gives a virus a constant supply of new hosts; it can move very quickly among the birds, perhaps mutating as it does so. In this situation, highly virulent strains can rapidly emerge. The European Food Safety Authority warns that it is important to guard against certain low pathogenic avian influenza subtypes entering poultry farms “as these subtypes are able to mutate into their highly pathogenic forms once circulating in poultry.”

Once highly pathogenic avian influenza strains have developed in poultry farms, they can then be carried back outside—for example, through the large ventilation fans used in intensive poultry operations—and spread to wild birds. The Scientific Task Force states that since the mid-2000s spillover of highly pathogenic bird flu from poultry to wild birds has occurred “on multiple occasions.”

So, low pathogenic bird flu is spread from wild birds to intensive poultry where it can mutate into highly pathogenic bird flu, which then spills over to wild birds and can even return back to poultry in a growing and continuing vicious circle.

Following its evolution in farmed poultry, the highly pathogenic virus has adapted to wild birds, meaning that it is circulating independently in wild populations, with some outbreaks occurring in remote areas that are distant from any poultry farms.

Is There a Health Risk for Humans?

While the health risk to humans from bird flu may be low, it cannot be ignored. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to mammals including otters, foxes, seals, dolphins, sea lions, dogs, and bears. Worryingly, it has been found in a Spanish mink farm where it then was able to spread from one infected mink to another.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that cow-to-cow transmission is a factor in the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. The ability for bird flu to move directly from one mammal to another is troubling as a pandemic could ensue if it could move directly from one human to another.

Scientists at Scripps Research reveal that a single mutation in the H5N1 virus that has recently infected U.S. dairy cows could enhance the virus’ ability to attach to human cells, potentially increasing the risk of passing from person to person.

A 2023 joint statement from the World Health Organization, the FAO, and WOAH stated that, while avian influenza viruses normally spread among birds, “the increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza detections among mammals—which are biologically closer to humans than birds are—raises concern that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily.”

Some mammals may also act as mixing vessels, leading to the emergence of new viruses that could be more harmful.

Pigs as Mixing Vessels

Pigs can be infected by avian and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. Pigs can act as mixing vessels in which these viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses can emerge. The U.S. CDC explains that if the resulting new virus infects humans and can spread easily from person to person, a flu pandemic can occur.

Need for a Coherent Strategy to End Bird Flu

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down. There is no sign of this happening. Without an exit strategy we are likely to face repeated, devastating outbreaks of bird flu for years to come. We need an action plan to restructure the poultry and pig sectors to reduce their capacity for generating highly pathogenic diseases.

We need to:

• Move to a poultry sector with smaller flocks and lower stocking densities to give the birds more space. Transmission and amplification of bird flu would be much less likely in such conditions.
• End the practice of clustering a large number of poultry farms close together in a particular area. Between-farm spread is a major contributor to the transmission of highly pathogenic bird flu.
• End the use of birds genetically selected for very fast growth. Such birds have impaired immune systems making them more susceptible to disease.

In light of pigs’ capacity for acting as mixing vessels for human, avian, and swine influenza viruses, the pig sector too needs to be restructured to make it less vulnerable to the transmission and amplification of influenza viruses. As with poultry, this would involve reducing stocking densities, smaller group sizes, and avoiding concentrating large numbers of farms in a particular area.

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence. Failure to rethink industrial farming leaves us vulnerable, with the continued devastation of wild birds and poultry, and perhaps even a human pandemic.

1. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/avian-flu-wild-birds
2. birds

South Korean health officials inspect a rice field frequented by migrating birds in Seosan, 130 kilometers (78 miles) southwest of Seoul, on November 24, 2006. 

(Photo: Jeon Young-Han/AFP via Getty Images)

Scapegoating Wild Birds Won’t Solve Avian Flu: We Need Radical Farming Reform

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence.

Peter Stevenson

May 10, 2025Common Dreams

For migratory and other wild birds, bird flu is a disaster. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, states that 169 million U.S. poultry have been affected by highly pathogenic bird flu since January 2022. Yet worldwide, tens of millions of wild birds have died of bird flu—which has also spread to mammals, including over 1,000 US. dairy herds.

Saturday 10 May is World Migratory Bird Day, a global event for raising awareness of migratory birds and issues related to their conservation. The poultry industry and governments like to blame wild birds for bird flu. However, the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds—which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) stresses that wild birds are in fact the victims of highly pathogenic bird flu; they do not cause it. As a recent study states, “This panzootic did not emerge from nowhere, but rather is the result of 20 years of viral evolution in the ever-expanding global poultry population.”

Until recently, the bird flu viruses that circulate naturally in wild birds were usually of low pathogenicity; they generally caused little harm to the birds. It is when it gets into industrial poultry sheds—often on contaminated clothing, feed, or equipment—that low pathogenic avian influenza can evolve into dangerous highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down.

Industrial poultry production, in which thousands of genetically similar, stressed birds are packed into a shed, gives a virus a constant supply of new hosts; it can move very quickly among the birds, perhaps mutating as it does so. In this situation, highly virulent strains can rapidly emerge. The European Food Safety Authority warns that it is important to guard against certain low pathogenic avian influenza subtypes entering poultry farms “as these subtypes are able to mutate into their highly pathogenic forms once circulating in poultry.”

Once highly pathogenic avian influenza strains have developed in poultry farms, they can then be carried back outside—for example, through the large ventilation fans used in intensive poultry operations—and spread to wild birds. The Scientific Task Force states that since the mid-2000s spillover of highly pathogenic bird flu from poultry to wild birds has occurred “on multiple occasions.”

So, low pathogenic bird flu is spread from wild birds to intensive poultry where it can mutate into highly pathogenic bird flu, which then spills over to wild birds and can even return back to poultry in a growing and continuing vicious circle.

Following its evolution in farmed poultry, the highly pathogenic virus has adapted to wild birds, meaning that it is circulating independently in wild populations, with some outbreaks occurring in remote areas that are distant from any poultry farms.

Is There a Health Risk for Humans?

While the health risk to humans from bird flu may be low, it cannot be ignored. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to mammals including otters, foxes, seals, dolphins, sea lions, dogs, and bears. Worryingly, it has been found in a Spanish mink farm where it then was able to spread from one infected mink to another.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that cow-to-cow transmission is a factor in the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. The ability for bird flu to move directly from one mammal to another is troubling as a pandemic could ensue if it could move directly from one human to another.

Scientists at Scripps Research reveal that a single mutation in the H5N1 virus that has recently infected U.S. dairy cows could enhance the virus’ ability to attach to human cells, potentially increasing the risk of passing from person to person.

A 2023 joint statement from the World Health Organization, the FAO, and WOAH stated that, while avian influenza viruses normally spread among birds, “the increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza detections among mammals—which are biologically closer to humans than birds are—raises concern that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily.”

Some mammals may also act as mixing vessels, leading to the emergence of new viruses that could be more harmful.

Pigs as Mixing Vessels

Pigs can be infected by avian and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. Pigs can act as mixing vessels in which these viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses can emerge. The U.S. CDC explains that if the resulting new virus infects humans and can spread easily from person to person, a flu pandemic can occur.

Need for a Coherent Strategy to End Bird Flu

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down. There is no sign of this happening. Without an exit strategy we are likely to face repeated, devastating outbreaks of bird flu for years to come. We need an action plan to restructure the poultry and pig sectors to reduce their capacity for generating highly pathogenic diseases.

We need to:

• Move to a poultry sector with smaller flocks and lower stocking densities to give the birds more space. Transmission and amplification of bird flu would be much less likely in such conditions.
• End the practice of clustering a large number of poultry farms close together in a particular area. Between-farm spread is a major contributor to the transmission of highly pathogenic bird flu.
• End the use of birds genetically selected for very fast growth. Such birds have impaired immune systems making them more susceptible to disease.

In light of pigs’ capacity for acting as mixing vessels for human, avian, and swine influenza viruses, the pig sector too needs to be restructured to make it less vulnerable to the transmission and amplification of influenza viruses. As with poultry, this would involve reducing stocking densities, smaller group sizes, and avoiding concentrating large numbers of farms in a particular area.

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence. Failure to rethink industrial farming leaves us vulnerable, with the continued devastation of wild birds and poultry, and perhaps even a human pandemic.

Caleb Taylor | 05.09.25

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• https://1819news.com/news/item/u-s-department-of-interior-expands-hunting-at-eufaula-national-wildlife-refuge
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Hunters will have expanded opportunities at the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge soon.

According to a Department of Interior spokesperson, the Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge will add archery as a new hunting method to expand an existing upland game hunt on 7,017 acres.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced 42 new proposed hunting opportunities last week across more than 87,000 acres within the National Wildlife Refuge System and National Fish Hatchery System.  

The proposal would more than triple the number of opportunities and quintuple the number of stations opened or expanded compared to the previous administration, underscoring a strong national commitment to outdoor recreation and conservation, according to the Department of Interior.

“Expanding recreational access to our public lands isn’t just about tradition—it’s about supporting rural economies and the American families who depend on them,” Burgum said. “By opening more areas to hunting and outdoor recreation, we’re helping drive tourism, create jobs, and generate revenue for local communities, all while promoting responsible stewardship of our natural resources.” 

The Service is proposing to open or expand opportunities for hunting and sport fishing at 16 National Wildlife Refuge System stations and one National Fish Hatchery System station. These stations are located in Alabama, California, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.

The Service will publish the proposal for public comment in the Federal Register and it will be available at http://www.regulations.gov. The Service intends to finalize the proposed changes in time for the upcoming 2025-2026 hunting seasons. 

“Hunting and fishing are traditional recreational activities deeply rooted in America’s heritage. National wildlife refuges, national fish hatcheries and other Service lands offer hunting and fishing access that helps boost local economies and gives Americans an opportunity to unplug,” said Fish and Wildlife Service acting director Paul Souza. “We are pleased to expand access and offer new opportunities that are compatible with our conservation mission and are committed to responsibly managing these areas for the benefit of future generations.” 

2025-2026 Hunt Fish Proposed Update Narratives Final by Caleb Taylor on Scribd

A hunter based out of Fort St. John, Adam Ward-Pattison, has been penalized for killing the at-risk northern mountain cow caribou species in the Pink Mountain area.

By Steven Berard ● Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, News, Peace Region ● May 9, 2025 ● 2 minutes of reading

• https://energeticcity.ca/2025/05/09/fort-st-john-hunter-fined-5000-for-killing-northern-mountain-caribou/

https://trinitymedia.ai/player/trinity-player.php?pageURL=https%3A%2F%2Fenergeticcity.ca%2F2025%2F05%2F09%2Ffort-st-john-hunter-fined-5000-for-killing-northern-mountain-caribou%2F&unitId=2900020841&userId=d87d6c70-698d-425c-a490-50e59507f6c4&isLegacyBrowser=false&isPartitioningSupport=1&version=20250506_1d81b9f84e04bd1a0bc65e3cf3926bd5aab7591e&useBunnyCDN=0&themeId=478&isMobile=0&unitType=tts-player&integrationType=web

The article below includes an image of a dead animal. Reader discretion is advised.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A local man has been fined thousands of dollars and banned from hunting in B.C. for three years for killing an at-risk species.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Environment and Parks, the incident occurred in October 2022 in the Pink Mountain area, when the man killed an animal he misidentified as a white-tailed buck.

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Once he began to harvest the animal, he realized he had actually killed a northern mountain cow caribou, a species on the province’s blue list that tracks animals at risk of endangerment.

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Upon discovering the animal’s actual species, the man self-reported the incident to the Conservation Officer Service (COS). The COS retrieved the animal’s body and donated it to a local First Nation.

Adam Ward-Pattison plead guilty to killing wildlife not with an open season, a violation of the Wildlife Act.

He has been fined $5,015, the majority of which will go to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, and is prohibited from hunting or accompanying hunters anywhere in the province for three years. 

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An unedited image of the deceased caribou is included here: