Agreements on animal protection in Calvia have been made by the town hall and the SOS Animal Foundation and Baldea, the Balearic group for the defence of animals. The aims of these agreements are to arrive at improved actions to protect animals in urban environments and to ensure greater compliance with existing legislation.
SOS Animal is a non-profit organisation which takes in and looks after abandoned animals. Work that it will undertake in collaboration with the town hall will relate to seeking adoption for animals that are either abandoned or handed over to its care by owners, to veterinary services, to co-ordination with cat colonies in Calvia and to advising the town hall on animal-protection matters.
The town hall will continue to be responsible for administrative tasks, administrative personnel for municipal facilities, inspection and collection of strays. A key objective will to be avoid having to put down animals, and so SOS Animal will endeavour to find someone to take an animal in if it is not possible to locate an owner or that the animal is not collected within the legally established period.
Baldea will work alongside the local animal protection association in providing volunteers for neutering at municipal cat colonies, with Baldea performing castrations in mobile units or at clinics. It will also be advising the town hall on ethical management of cat colonies and the avoidance of uncontrolled reproduction.
Under the agreements, Calvia will pay SOS Animal an annual 16,000 euros for work it undertakes in respect of adoption and looking after animals at facilities ceded to it plus 12,000 euros for sanitary and veterinary costs. Baldea will receive 8,000 euros per annum for its sterilising work. Both agreements will last for two years, extendable by a maximum of four years.
The arrangement with SOS Animal follows on from one that was signed in January 2012 and from a further agreement whereby facilities were ceded to it for a period of thirty years in 2008.