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Updated Sunday, September 14, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By T.C. Jiang, CNA staff writer



	A “Cat-Dog 119” rescue van of the Taipei-based Life Caring and Animal Rescue Organization Taiwan (LCO) launches an emergency rescue mission late at night. The around-the-clock rescue operation is being threatened by a funding shortage.(CNA) Enlarge Photo

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24-hour animal rescue service on brink of closure

Taiwan’s only around-the-clock animal rescue service may come to a halt in October due to a shortage of funds, dealing another blow to the country’s under-financed efforts to care for stray animals.

“The growing number of rescue cases referred by the central government and the Taipei city government, and a fall-off in public donations in recent months have made it difficult to carry on the service,” said Tiger Tung, CEO of

the Taipei-based Life Caring and Animal Rescue Organization Taiwan (LCO).

Over the past four years of its existence, the association, Taiwan’s biggest animal rescue organization, has rescued not only 6,000 cats and dogs, it has also saved a Formosan Sambar Deer, a Formosan Blue Magpie, a scaly anteater, an eagle, a dove and three rabbits, Tung told the Central News Agency in a recent interview.

Taiwan has several non-governmental animal protection groups, and some of them provide regional rescue services, but the LCO is the only one that offers 24-hour rescues around the island.

Headquartered in northern Taiwan, its members answer calls from many parts of the island, including the southernmost county of Pingtung, to save injured, abused, or stray animals, Tung said.

After rescuing the animals — mostly stray cats and dogs — the association gives them away to people who want to adopt them, or raises them in large kennels until they pass away, Tung said. It is currently caring for nearly 400 animals.

Since the association received widespread local media coverage of its rescue service in mid 2007, it has been referred many cases of strays by central and local governments, with the number of cases increasing noticeably in July and August, Tung said.

“However, the governments provide no funds to us and we have to shoulder all the costs,” he said. “If there weren’t so many government cases, I believe that our rescue service would be able to survive.”

Both governments of Taipei City and Taipei County do provide some animal rescue services, but the services are not available late at night, on weekends, or over holidays, and thus reported cases get transferred to the group.

The association applied to the Cabinet-level council of Agriculture for subsidies in late July, but the application was rejected earlier this month, Tung said.

The council told the association that it only provides funds for education and neutering, not animal rescues, Tung said.

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