Estimación de la población de perros y gatos vagabundos dentro del cantón Riobamba

Abstract

Free-roaming cats and dogs have a high impact on the environmental and are considered a public health problem because they are carriers of often zoonotic diseases. The present study was carried out in the city of Riobamba, Ecuador, which has 258,597 inhabitants and 97,970 hectares of surface. The sample of this study was obtained from the census areas of the Canton provided by INEC (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses), 10 randomly chosen areas 7 urban zone and 2 rural parishes. The tours were carried out from 04:00 to 06:00 (local time) with two members of the team, one for cats and one for dogs, collecting the data (number of sightings, distance to the animal, degrees to the animal, degrees to the transect). The data was tabulated in Excel® and the Distance® program was used to choose the model and estimate the population dogs and cats. The best model for dogs were Hazard rate – Simple polynomial with 10% truncated and for cats Negative Exponential – Simple polynomial with 10% truncated, these were adjusted based on the AIC (Akaike Information Criterion). The population density per hectare for dogs was 1.16 dogs/ha and for cats 0.44 cats/ha. The total population estimate 113,577 dogs and 43,403 cats. Univariate and multivariate analyzes were made in RStudio® program to identify factors of overpopulation of dogs and cats, the variables studied were based on the 2010 Population and Housing Census. With Poisson regression, an association was found between white ethnicity and the number of dogs per kilometer. In the case of cats, no associations were found with the variables studied. With these results, the baseline on the demography of stray dogs and cats was obtained to take strategies regarding urban fauna and public policy of the Riobamba City.