By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter, with CNA
Modular animal shelters would be deployed on state-owned land to help accommodate free-roaming dogs, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, adding that the first site would be set up in Taoyuan.
The ministry yesterday held an event at the National Taiwan Arts Education Center in Taipei to showcase its efforts to promote animal welfare education, featuring the stage play The Wandering Diary of Boss Black Cat and Dog A-Chi (黑貓老大與阿奇的流浪日記).
The stage play has undertaken 15 family theater tours and 82 campus tours nationwide since it was launched last year, bringing an audience of 35,000 people over the past two years, the ministry said.
Ministry of Agriculture officials and cast members of the stage play The Wandering Diary of Boss Black Cat and Dog A-Chi pose for a photograph at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: CNA
It received an audience approval rating of 98 percent and won the London Design Awards last year, it added.
Animal Welfare Department Deputy Director Chen Chung-hsing (陳中興) said the ministry is planning to set up easy-to-build, mobile animal shelters to reduce the number of free-roaming dogs, as many animal shelters are nearly full.
Mobile shelters are simple building modules that can be easily set up and taken down, he said.
They would be set up on national land governed by the ministry without requiring land grading and building construction, Chen said, which would mitigate damage to the land.
The modular shelters could accommodate local free-roaming dogs for up to two years, Chen said, and would add capacity for permanent full-up shelters
The first modular shelters would be set up in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋), where 660m2 of national woodland would be used to create about 80m2 of accommodation space, Chen said.
The ministry has been surveying the number of free-roaming dogs in Taiwan every two years since 2018, he said.
The figure has decreased from 159,000 dogs in 2021 to 141,000 dogs in 2024, Chen said.
Animal welfare education is part of the 12-Year Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines in accordance with the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法), he said.
The ministry collaborated with Ifkids Theatre (如果兒童劇團) to develop the stage play to introduce the concept of animal welfare protection into young students’ daily life, Chen said.
The attitudes of humans toward animals could determine the animals’ future, he said.