Stray dogs from other municipalities migrated to Sofia in order to find food, director of the Ekoravnovesie (Ecobalance) municipal enterprise Miroslav Naidenov told Focus News Agency.

“Therefore we expect the adoption in full shape of the animal protection law, which would oblige municipalities to carry out a programme to reduce the population of stray dogs in 3 years' time. Currently Sofia carries out such a programme, but other municipalities around Sofia are not doing it and we are witnessing a migration of stray dogs to Sofia in order to seek food,” Naidenov explained. For this reason the Sofia Municipality policy was oriented especially to the outskirt residential areas of the city where the newly arrived dogs usually settled, Naidenov said as reported by Focus News Agency.

Naidenov said the municipality had the ambition to build three new dog pounds over the next three years, which, together with the one in Seslavtsi, should have capacity to hold about 1000 dogs. Currently the only dog pound in Seslavtsi has a capacity of 250 dogs. By spring 2008 the first private dog pound, built by a non-governmental organisation was expected to open.

The plan was that non-governmental organisations would build additional pounds and this way, in three years' time, when 2000 stray dogs were expected to inhabit Sofia, half of the dogs be taken in municipal, and the other half in private dog pounds, Naidenov said.

According to information provided by Naidenov, since September 2006 Sofia residents adopted 379 stray dogs, with most of the adoptions taking place during summer months.