Dogs and cats entering the foothills may spread disease; scholars call for regulation to protect wildlife

Do you love taking your furry little one outdoors to the forest to "enjoy nature"? The Forestry Bureau of the Council of Agriculture announced that starting this month, owners are prohibited from bringing dogs, cats and other mammals into 25 forest recreation areas including Taipingshan, Hehuanshan and Kenting, on the grounds of preventing wild animals from transmitting rabies to dogs, cats and other pets.

From an epidemic-prevention perspective, however, the risk of domestic dogs and cats passing diseases to wild animals is also considerable, and conservation scholars are calling for controls on the range of activity of dogs and cats to be extended to national parks, national scenic areas and other low-elevation mountain zones, otherwise these are also "epidemic-prevention loopholes."

Yen Shen-horn, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at National Sun Yat-sen University, believes that from an epidemic-prevention perspective,the Forestry Bureau's intentions are good, but the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications must act in step at national scenic areas for the effect to be complete. Taking the Liugui area of Kaohsiung as an example, the Tengjhih Forest Recreation Area is administered by the Forestry Bureau, while the Maolin National Scenic Area and Xinwei Forest Park are managed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. "Clearly the whole area is one and the same place, yet only one part is regulated while the other parts are not, so what use is that?"

Yen Shen-horn also believes that prohibiting pets from being brought into forest recreation areas can also prevent owners from abandoning them at will; even if people want to bring their own "furry little ones" to forest recreation areas, domestic cats and dogs should be properly managed to avoid their getting lost, and dogs in particular should be kept on a leash.

For example, at the end of last month in Sheting, Kenting, there was a case of a "Formosan sika deer colliding with a person": "That was a local person who brought a dog in, and then the dog chased the deer, and the deer hit the person," and it was also a case of a serious fall. Because dogs will bark as soon as they catch a scent, or want to chase animals, this is all disturbance to wild animals, so "dogs should not be brought into recreation areas in low-elevation mountain zones."