Saipan\u2019s stray dog problem, which unofficial estimates say number anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000, can negatively affect the recovering tourism industry of the island, according to The Humane Society of the United States Hawaii State director Inga Gibson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just about animal welfare; it\u2019s also about public health and public safety. When you have animals on the road\u2014whether they are free-roaming animals or if you have animals deceased on the side of the road\u2014that\u2019s not something anyone wants to see. From our research and other\u2019s research, tourists and visitors are less likely to return to places where there are these free-roaming dog populations. This translates to millions of dollars of lost revenue potentially for Saipan,\u201d said Gibson, who recently visited Saipan to hold a seminar for the staff of the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office\u2019s Dog Control Program.<\/p>\n
She said that tourists simply correlate the treatment\u2014or maltreatment of animals\u2014to the condition of the destination.<\/p>\n
\u201cTourists don\u2019t want to see animals suffering. They don\u2019t want to see deceased animals on the side of the road. They don\u2019t want to see puppies or cats that are in distress. We know there\u2019s a direct negative economic impact when you have these large free-roaming [animal] populations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Gibson likens Saipan\u2019s current stray dog problem to that of another U.S. insular territory, Puerto Rico, and how it relates to the tourism industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cPuerto Rico also has a large stray dog population problem and they\u2019ve actually calculated the loss in the millions of dollars to their tourism industry because when people come and they see animals that are suffering, they say \u2018Not only am I not coming back to spend my money here, but I\u2019m gonna tell 10 people never to go there.\u2019 So the impacts are exponential when it comes to impacts to the tourism industry. \u2026The word gets out\u2014they usually say \u2018don\u2019t go to this place because the animals are not being cared for.\u2019 People care about animals and they don\u2019t want to see animals suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan\u2019s stray dog problem, which unofficial estimates say number anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000, can negatively affect the recovering tourism industry of the island, according to The Humane Society of the United States Hawaii State director Inga Gibson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}