For the third time in less than a year, livestock farmers in the eastern mountainous Paphos are complaining of serious damage to their herds by stray dogs and are again appealing to the competent authorities to intervene immediately to end the phenomenon.
Livestock breeders, farmers, but also ordinary residents of areas around the Asprokremmos dam say they are afraid of the extent of the phenomenon of stray dog attacks on sheep, goats and other domestic animals in the area. Packs of dogs attack herds that go out to graze under the supervision of breeders or other animals that they locate on their own, as a result of which serious losses are now recorded on a frequent basis, as they complain.
Breeders who reported this situation to the Police and the Department of Agriculture, told "F" that the problem with stray dogs has arisen in the area of Asprokremmos in recent months, when hunters who take hunting dogs there for training, abandon many of them because they judge that they are not capable enough for the purpose for which they acquired them.
These dogs, residents of the surrounding communities complain, are naturally foraging, as a result of which they attack herds or individual animals. In addition to these attacks, however, they reveal, stray dogs also find dead animals that breeders transport when they die for other reasons to an area in Asprokremmos from where they are picked up by a truck to transport them to a place where they were burned.
However, dogs also detect these dead animals, which they eat with the obvious health risks, the complainants of the problem say.
Farmers and residents of the communities in the wider area of Asprokremmos are asking the Police and the state departments involved to intervene immediately to put an end to the situation that has developed, before things get out of hand, according to their expression, since threatening behaviours by stray dogs are already being recorded within the core of the communities. Such incidents have already been reported to Anarita, they emphasize.
