A latest instance of abhorrent animal abuse in Greece was reported from the Dodecanese Island of Rhodes this week, with an employee at the isle’s municipal kennel charging that a local stockbreeder, by all accounts, abandoned an entire herd of sheep and goats on a deserted rock islet.
According to reports, the animals had been abandoned on an islet identified as Makri without feed or water, with several dying of dehydration and hunger.
Kennel employee Giorgos Kritikos told Greece’s state broadcaster ERT that the “animals have been left without food and water for some time; they’re so exhausted that they are now losing their balance and failing off the rocks to their death”.
Kritikos said he was notified by a volunteer of the herd’s plight last week. He added that some 50 animals comprised the herd.
“We mobilized to feed the animals. There is now food on the islet, but the animals have difficulty reaching the feeding points due to their weakness. About 25 are alive today and volunteers managed to rescue two of them from the high ground where they had taken refuge,” he said.
The case has already been referred to a local prosecutor on possible charges of animal cruelty against a still unidentified perpetrator, while the Hellenic coast guard will reportedly check several other small rock islets around Rhodes for the possibility of other abandoned animals.
