The officers in green at the Department of Agriculture's Animal Control division were pulled away from their regular mandate recently due to Typhoons Mawar and Bolaven.

Animal Control Officer Mathew Dempan explained, "We were actually up at Machananao Elementary. For both storms, for Mawar and Bolaven. We were up there for about two days for the most recent one and for Mawar, for a total of three.  Just helping GDOE staff and providing security, along with the conservation officers."

Now they're back on track and better equipped.

"We’re back out there in the fields setting traps, going out addressing complaints and daily animal control stuff," he said. 

 

 

The Department of Agriculture’s animal control division getting new equipment that will help tackle stray animal complaints.

10 new traps and three transfer cages were purchased by Guam Animals In Need. 

"It’s a huge help. It allows us to set more traps in different places," Demapan said. "Usually the protocol is to set one trap per complaint. Whereas now having 19, we can possibly set two or three depending on how bad the situation is with the strays."

Before the purchase, animal control officers like Demapan had to work with just eight traps for the whole island. Now they have 19. 

The biggest plus to the new traps? Demapan gives a quick demonstration.

 

 

 

"This is one of our older traps, and this is the newer model," he said. "When I say the difference between the trapping mechanism, with the new ones, it's a lot simpler to set. It's basically a one-step process. All you’re going to have to do is push this lever down, lift the door up and it's set."

He said it’s more convenient compared to their old equipment.

"Slightly more steps. You’re going to push this door forward, lift it up, and there's a hook right there that will hold the door up," Demapan explained. 

It's a huge help especially when they get so many calls every week.

"On a weekly basis, I would say somewhere between the ballpark of 40 to 50 complaints," he said. "Out of the 40 to 50 complaints, I would say half of them would be stray-related. The others would vary between bite holds, aggressive animals, neglect and things of that nature."

Sometimes cases require a lot more traps than they have. 

"We’ve had multiple occasions where we got calls where there were 20-plus strays in one particular residence, and we were only able to set one trap."Whereas now having more allows us to set more of course and be able to bring up more animals.

It comes at a time when they're down a man. 

"It's less now," he said. "There’s a total of four field officers as well as one dispatcher. So the grand total is five ACO’s."

Officers are taking extra care of their equipment, spraying traps with rust inhibitors.  

 

 

Dempan also is asking the community to help utilize the traps properly as the whole island needs this equipment.  

"When we do bring traps out to your location, some of the challenges that we encounter are complainants themselves not letting us know when there are dogs in the traps," he said. "So when you do have traps, especially in places like schools or places of business, let's just get very proactive in getting us out there as soon as a dog gets trapped, because we don’t want an animal to stay there any longer than they should be. Especially with the weather these past few months that have not been forgiving."