The Animal Welfare area of the Cabildo, directed by councilor Elena Solís, held a technical table last week to address the "problem" of cat colonies in Lanzarote and La Graciosa. At the meeting, to which all the town councils were invited, a project was presented that has been coordinated by the Professor of Toxicology at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Octavio Pérez Luzardo, and which aims to prepare an "unprecedented" census of cat colonies, in order to then launch sterilization campaigns.
“We want to know how many cat colonies there are and where they are located, so that we can later act and have control of them”, said Elena Solís. “It was a very fruitful meeting, of almost three hours, in which all the details of the problem of cat colonies were worked on and the importance of making a diagnosis and a census of them was discussed,” explained the councilor.
The technical table, which was held in the Assembly Hall of the Cabildo, was attended by the councilors and technicians of Environment and Animal Welfare of the seven municipalities of the island, as well as the head of the Chinijo Archipelago of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO).
During the meeting, the Cabildo raised the need to quantify the number of abandoned cats in Lanzarote and La Graciosa, both in rural and urban environments, in order to later assess what would be the best strategy to follow to carry out mass sterilization campaigns.
The Councilor for the Environment and Animal Welfare of the Cabildo presided over the technical table, in which she was accompanied by the island's Director of the Environment, Yarci Acosta, the coordinator of the Animal Welfare area, Ruymán Duarte, and the coordinator of the 'Community Cat Management' project and Professor of Toxicology at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Octavio Pérez.
