More than 12 municipalities of Kosovo have active CNVR projects, which is a larger number of municipalities than in previous years.

Unfortunately, we have not seen that any municipality has made an initial assessment of the situation with stray dogs in their territory (eg. counting dogs), before starting the CNVR projects.

The initial assessment of the situation with the population of dogs in a municipality, including the counting of dogs, is a necessary measure to determine the priority areas of the city for intervention, especially in municipalities with limited funds for the control of dog reproduction. Data such as the estimated number of dogs, the female-male ratio in stray dogs, the number of uncastrated/unsterilized dogs, etc., would help each municipality to spend unds that are allocated to the treatment of street dogs with the CNVR method to a great effect.

The collection of data in the field is also important for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures undertaken, helping to improve or change the measures where it is observed that the success of the implemented projects is lacking.

Moreover, the initial assessment of the number of dogs in a municipality is also foreseen by the National Strategy. This initial assessment precedes the establishment of local dog population management programs. In this regard, the central level should assist the municipalities to collect data on the ground, to design effective measures in each municipality to manage the local dog population humanely and to reduce the number of dogs in a sustainable way.

Apart from Prishtina, where our organization has carried out a dog count collecting very useful data on the dynamics of the dog population, no other municipality has such data.

There is now a professional method of collecting this data, which has been created by ICAM Coalition (icam-coalition.org), which is a coalition of several large international organizations with extensive experience in dog population management.

Since the staff of our organization already has experience in using this method, as well as having completed the training organized by ICAM, we will turn to the municipalities of Kosovo to offer our support, so that each municipality in the future collects data for the dog population, in more frequent periods of time (every 3 or 6 months).

It is extremely important that this data is collected, so that public funds are spent effectively, but also that the number of dogs on the streets is reduced sustainably, and the dogs on the other side benefit from better welfare.