In case you didn’t see the previous posts or are unaware of the animal crisis here in Guam:
A bit more background information for your awareness:
-Guam is a US Territory, and our stray "boonie dogs" descend from dogs brought over by US Troops during WWII. We even have a War Dog monument on island.
-The dog/cat population was estimated to be 60,000 in 2014 by a Humane Society International survey with population growth of 3% annually, putting our current population at +75,000 on a small island of only 170,000 people. 'boonie dogs' can be seen found in every neighborhood and street corner.
They are often seen dying of starvation, hit by cars, or slowly collapsing from infections caused by the jungle conditions. Some have been forming territorial packs and become a threat to neighborhoods, attacking children, killing pets, and frightening families.
Unneutered and unspayed, litters abound - to the extent that people working in landscaping or construction will come upon a bunch of puppies or kittens and simply throw them in a dumpster.
This has happened in our neighborhood several times.
-By basic and extremely conservatiive projections, this means a minimum of 150,000 puppies are dying on the street each year (realistically probably +200,000)
-We find dogs and puppies in many horrific situations each week, including but not limited to: trash bags, dumpsters, boxes on side of road, drowned, shot at by BBs/guns and killed or injured, severely mangey, wandering with open sores from tight collars, etc
-Our island has ONE shelter. They are amazing to work with and are our biggest partner. However, they have very limited resources and very few local adoptions which leads to an extremely high euthanasia rate - of approximately 6,000 annual intakes, over 5,000 are euthanized. This is no fault of the sole shelter on island. They do keep a very long waitlist of animals waiting for acceptance to help decrease these numbers.
-Until recently, there was no low cost spay/neuter program. Local groups have recently worked with the local government and shelter to start the island's first program.
-United Airlines discontinued their pet shipping program in 2018. They are our only domestic airline and this has effectively left many animals abandoned/stranded and made it extremely challenging to ship rescue dogs. They do give an exemption to military families flying on relocation orders and allow them to fly pets as checked bags. I'm currently emailing back and forth with the Manager of Cargo and Quality at United Airlines to arrange a meeting with him and Gov Guam officials including the Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Territorial Veterinarian, Director of Dept of Agriculture, and Shelter President. However, he continues to refuse a meeting with a long list of excuses as to why they cannot ship pets for locals. Data shows that the impact of pets left behind by families relocating has a statistically significant impact on stray population growth.
-The current cost to ship a dog off island through a charter is $3,000-5,000 per pet with very limited availability.
-Animal rescues, Facebook-organized rescue groups, and several efforts by the government are trying to address this issue but it's a slow process. Everyone is drowning in foster animals, and with increasing financial strain on the island, most residents can't even care for the dogs they already are responsible for.
It's a heartbreaking and complex situation.
We are aiming to make a dent in the animal crisis in any way we can. Our biggest priorities are to bring awareness to how much suffering there is on the island in hopes of others joining us on our endeavour. And we need to spay and neuter as much as possible. We hope to have enough funds and donors to continuously fund spays and neuters. Any excess funds we raise will be donated to other animal organizations here on the island.
