We hardly know about people breeding wolf dogs in India; but we do know they are prevalent in the wild, say experts
(From left) A stray dog, a Tibetan wolf in Ladakh and an Indian wolf. Photos: Wikimedia Commons and iStock. Collage: Chaitanya Chandan / CSE The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying recently issued a letter to states where it requested local bodies to not issue any licences or permit for sale and breeding of dogs it considers to be ‘ferocious’ and ‘dangerous for human life’.
Among the 23 breeds enumerated in the letter is the wolf dog.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, wolf dogs “are produced by breeding a wolf with any of a variety of domestic dogs, including Akitas, German shepherds, Alaskan malamutes, and huskies”.
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It further notes that “the blend of wild and domestic genes in wolf-dog hybrids, however, gives rise to a complicated mosaic of disposition and instinct. Hybrids tend to be relatively gentle when young, but as they grow, they increasingly resemble wolves in their behavior”.
Wolf dogs thus have the instincts of a wild animal.
Recent reports of escaped wolf dogs “killing small dogs and threatening humans in the United States have renewed concerns about whether or not these animals should continue to be bred and sold to the public”, notes Britannica.
Experts Down To Earth (DTE) spoke to, said that the decision regarding the inclusion of wolf dogs in the Centre’s list was a bit strange as there was hardly any data available on these hybrids being bred by people in the country.
More importantly, hybridisation is taking place between wolves and free-ranging dogs in India’s wilderness areas, posing a threat to the country’s wolves. This is something the government has hardly paid attention to, they added.
“We have no data if something like a wolf dog is being bred in India. If there are people keeping wolf dogs, it is punishable under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, since the wolf is a Schedule I species,” Abi Vanak, director of the Centre for Policy Design at ATREE, Bengaluru, told DTE.
Deciding to ban wolf dogs without having necessary information about them was strange, Vanak added.
Narendra Patil, a wildlife conservationist and writer who has worked in tiger and snow leopard range areas of the country, said he was against any kind of breeding.
“If we look at the ethics of breeding, animals that are mated to create something, do not do so on their own account. And the animal that is created as a result often has genetic defects and deformities. Many dog breeds suffer genetic illnesses and deformities just because humans wanted to or want to make something for aesthetic reasons,” he told DTE.
For both Vanak and Patil, the wolf-dog hybrids being created in India’s wilds are a real cause of concern.
“In Ladakh, there is a name for a wolf-dog hybrid: Khib-shang. Khi in Ladakhi refers to ‘dog’ while shang refers to chanku or wolf. If a community has a name for a particular animal, it means they are prevalent enough to be a common phenomenon,” said Patil, who speaks from first-hand field experience in the cold desert region.
For him, the problem is two-fold. Exotic breeds are bought by urban Indians and often let out on the streets when they become unmanageable. They roam the streets along with stray or pye-dogs that are already a controversial issue in urban India.
Meanwhile, free-ranging dogs on the fringes of forests are a problem as they spread canine distemper and cause hybridisation among wildlife and livestock.
The real issue, according to Patil, is bad ownership. “There are owners who keep dogs until they are not in a condition to do so and discard them. The breed of the dog is immaterial,” he said.
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“Don’t bring in dogs in the country that cannot adapt to Indian conditions,” he added.
“An offshoot of having a bad dog ownership policy and a bad free-ranging dog policy is that there are already extant wolf-dog hybrids in India. And they are not restricted to the khib-shang in Ladakh. Hybridisation is happening between these dogs and any kind of canid including wolves, jackals and others,” said Patil.
Vanak, who came out with a paper on wolf-dog hybridisation in Pune last year, agrees. “In many cases, we have heard people say that these (wolf-dog) hybrids are aggressive towards or involved in the killing of sheep or livestock. However, we lack data on this. So we need to understand this problem fully by studying it in detail. But regarding the separate issue of wolf dog breeding, banning something without knowing whether it exists or not seems to be a knee-jerk reaction,” he said.
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