서울시 동물복지지원시설 도입방안

In Seoul, 20.4% of households own companion animals. This number has been growing up over the last decade. However, animal abandonment is still occurring. Owners’ awareness about responsible ownership remains low. Moreover there are insufficient public resources and programs to encourage animal care. We can learn how to play roles in animal care from overseas cases. For example, we can rescue and care animals in need, adopt and surrender animals. We can also provide education and consulting about animal care. Survey results revealed that only doing rescues by animal care centers in local districts was insufficient to manage animals successfully. Citizens also asked Seoul city government to act as a control tower of animal care by running similar animal care centers in foreign cities. It is expected that households that own companion animals will increase up to 29% soon and the number of citizens who demand the encompassing of animal care will also increase. From this perspective, Seoul city government will run its own facilities, the so called Seoul Animal Center(SAC). This is estimated to bring benefit of 4.4 billion Korean won. Considering role allocation between City Government and local Governments, collaboration with NGOs and functional overlap with markets, the roles of SAC are restricted to protect animals and encourage pet culture such as placement of surrendering animal, adoption, vet, education, consulting, R&D, and platform for community animators. The southwest area of Seoul with high population is expected to be the best site for the first facility. Three additional facilities might be followed if the first one works well.