Legambiente published the ninth edition of “Animals in the City”, the report on the services offered by administrations and health companies for the management of pets. Increasing public spending and large disparities between territories, these are the data in line with the trend of the previous report that emerge from the survey.

The ninth edition of Animali in Città was presented today, April 13, 2021, the substantial investigation by Legambiente on the services offered by municipal administrations and health companies for the management of pets and on the quality of our coexistence in the city with wild animals. and not. The report, which analyzes 2019 data, returns a pre-pandemic picture in line with the previous one, with a slight overall improvement but without significant progress in any of the fields analyzed. A photograph of the country, certainly partial, which shows a general increase in the public density and an enormous disparity between the territories, demonstrating the need for greater efforts at the national level that can help to smooth out local differences.

The performance of municipalities and health companies

Just 1,069 municipal administrations (about 13.5% of all Italian municipalities) and 46 health companies (equivalent to 40.7% of the total) responded to the Legambiente questionnaire. From the enormous amount of data collected by the association, it emerges that 69.5% of municipalities declare that they have a branch dedicated to animal rights in the city but that only one in seven (15.7%) manages to achieve a sufficient performance. Putting together all the indicators used to evaluate the administrations, only Prato, Modena and Bergamo managed to exceed the score necessary to reach the optimal level. Eleven administrations in total were awarded in their respective categories, almost all from the north, with Naples representing the only administration of the southern regions among all those awarded. The total public expenditure for the management of animals of the municipalities that participated in the survey in 2019 was almost 229 million euros (an increase of 3.6% compared to the previous year). A rather high figure if compared with other important items of expenditure for the country, equal to 2.7 times the sum committed for all 24 national parks (85 million euros) or 62 times that for all 27 marine protected areas (3 , 7 million euros) and decidedly disproportionate when compared to the quality of the services offered in terms of animal welfare. The ratio between resources committed and results obtained reached excellent levels for just 1% of the municipalities analyzed, for a total of eleven. Most of the costs were absorbed by shelters, for which the municipalities declare to spend 59.3% of the budget allocated to the sector (approximately 93 million euros for 2019). Structures that are managed on their own by the administrations for 2.2%, through companies or cooperatives with public procurement 21.7% and through associations in agreement for 27.9%. For the remaining 48.2% no information is available. On the other hand, the data provided by the health companies show 226 active shelter kennels for 36,766 places available, however at the end of 2019 over 92 thousand dogs were hosted in these structures, or 2.5 times the places available.

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