It shouldn’t have happened.
Shire councils should not be killing dogs “to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals.”
But that’s what happened. The Bourke Shire Council in the New South Wales region of Australia shot and killed several dogs, including a new mother, that were about to be picked up and taken to an animal shelter.
An Office of Local Government reported that the council did this “to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”
We all know that shelters sometimes put down animals when the shelter cannot find a home for them.
This wasn’t that. The council’s action wasn’t a reluctant last resort. It was a first resort.
It was, the argument runs, about preventing volunteers from going from here to there in the ordinary course of their work, work that has not been discontinued for the duration of the pandemic.
The council’s action is an example of what happens when fear displaces common sense. The thwarted shelter volunteers, who love animals and volunteer precisely to prevent needless killing, are distressed. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they had safety measures in place to deal with the pandemic while getting the dogs.
This isn’t the worst kind of thing going on in this world, obviously.
But you don’t have to be an animal rights activist to be appalled by the viciousness of the conduct.
And it does serve as a marker for the callousness and crazed panic of politicians in the current crisis. What else might they do?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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