The Department of Animal Protection will extend the contract for the provision of veterinary services for the municipal shelter

The Department of Animal Protection of the Torrevieja City Council is going to modify/extend the contract for the provision of Veterinary Services for the Municipal Shelter. Specifically, in the section on sterilization of cats and ferrets, it will go from 350 sterilization units to 1,187, increasing its number by 837 units, which represents an increase of 54,000 euros.

In the city of Torrevieja, at least the following urban colonies of ownerless cats have been registered, with a total of 2,552 specimens, of which 1,117 remain uncastrated (43.77%). Since the previous castration campaign carried out at the end of 2021, there has been an increase in copies of more than 300, mostly copies of abandoned cats and newborns. Cats that, according to associations and NGOs, correspond to two-thirds of new births, a consequence of births after the mating season, as well as new abandoned cats in the urban environment, which account for the remaining third of the increase in cats that make up the street.

It should be noted that the attention and, above all, the demographic control of these colonies is convenient and necessary both for a good coexistence with the neighbors, as a way of minimizing the incidence of cat colonies on wildlife in certain areas (predation on birds, reptiles and other faunal groups), and even for the well-being of these feline colonies and proper public health.

Likewise, the Veterinary Services contract contemplates the castration of 350 specimens of cats or ferrets (males or females), which are mostly used for castration and adoption of the cats existing in said facilities. Although, in the last sterilization campaign of feline colonies, 173 specimens were neutered, which is a negligible amount to control the number of uncastrated cats existing in the feline colonies of our municipality, as well as the increase experienced since the previous campaign of castrations subsidized by the Provincial Council of Alicante. All this in order to achieve certain demographic control, and it is necessary to carry it out.

As a consequence of the above, the Department of Animal Protection of the Torrevieja City Council has proposed a modification/extension of the contract in order to control feline colonies and at the same time avoid collateral damage that may be generated in natural and urban biodiversity. mainly caused by the feline colonies existing on the periphery and within the Natural Park of the lagoons of La Mata and Torrevieja and in the Municipal Natural Park "Molino del Agua".