Diffusing the deer-dog duel

Wildlife Conservation Club, a three-part project by MCC students Smrithi Wilson and Karthik, attempts to create awareness on animal behaviour
Diffusing the deer-dog duel
Diffusing the deer-dog duel

When you live in a veritable forest, where deer frolick about, monkeys mostly get their way and snakes stop by every now and then, strays —- even the not so friendly ones — become an inevitable presence of your social life. At least, that’s the way it goes at Madras Christian College (MCC). Having coexisted with the humans of that education village for decades, the dogs there find themselves on a different level of the human-animal evolution chain. “The dogs know which hostel to go to and at what time in order to get food,” says Smrithi Wilson, a BSc Zoology student who has adopted a stray from the campus.

However, things have been far from ideal after the number of lockdowns brought in by the pandemic. With many students vacating the hostels and moving back home, the college campus has been empty for the most part of the past year. “This was quite hard for the dogs. Desperate for food, even the friendly ones started ganging up with the feral dogs to form packs and attack the deer population on campus,” says Smrithi. Given that things had strayed far from common annoyances, Smrithi’s batch of Zoology students was asked to develop a project on animal behaviour. Along with her classmate Karthik, she set up the Wildlife Conservation Club and a plan to reduce the deer-dog conflict without harming either party.

"This a three-part project. For the first part, we approached the NGO People For Cattle India (PFCI) and conducted an event on campus on October 11. As part of this, we vaccinated 20 dogs on that day. Even a few faculty had brought their dogs to the drive to get them vaccinated,” says Smrithi. The Wildlife Conservation Club was officially inaugurated on the same day. It now has around 30 student volunteers.

The second part of the project would have the club members setting out to befriend the feral dogs. “This is quite important. We can’t randomly catch dogs, vaccinate and spray/neuter them. So, we are now working on befriending the feral dog population by feeding them. This set of dogs will be vaccinated after that. The dogs must also have a good platelet count before we perform the surgery,” says the 19-year-old.

The final step is carrying out the Animal Birth Control programme to control the dog population. “Here, we will get professional dog catchers to catch these dogs and spray/neuter them. After this, we will not clip their ears but put collars with reflectors on them instead. We are getting those collars stitched in the college’s stitching unit,” she says.

The duo had pitched this project to the members of the college’s Ideation Club a few months ago. “This was well-received. We also got to fine-tune the idea. Later, we pitched it to a few investors, who gave us small funding too. At that point, we were sure that we had to implement it properly,” she says.

The project doesn’t stop here, by the way. “The southern part of Chennai doesn’t really have a lot of good pet clinics or grooming centres. I remember how I had to take my dogs to Besant Nagar to get their treatments done. So, the plan here is to start a pet clinic, a grooming centre, a pet shop and a boarding house in order to generate revenue to get this project running,” she says. In the long run, they are also planning to start a shelter for malnourished and rescued dogs and to train the dogs to guard the campus. “We have also proposed to change the vegetation pattern of the college campus in such a way that the dog and the deer use separate paths to travel. This can reduce conflict,” she says.

Lauding the students for the initiative, the college’s principal Paul Wilson says that talks are underway to integrate this project into the academic curriculum too. “This project took off so well that students from all other departments have collaborated in making this a success. The students from the Statistics department are helping with data mapping and the Botany department is working on changing the vegetation pattern to avoid animal conflict,” he says.

Pet Project

The plan is to start a pet clinic, a grooming centre, a pet shop and a boarding house. In the long run, Smrithi and Karthik also intend to start a shelter for malnourished and rescued dogs and train the dogs to guard the campus

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