Authorities in Baubau, a city in Southeast Sulawesi, planned to scatter poisoned food along its streets over five consecutive nights in an operation targeting as many as 2,000 dogs. This was not an allegation made after unidentified dogs were found dead. It was an operation publicly announced by the city’s Agriculture and Food Security Department.
Beginning on 27 July 2026, municipal teams intended to distribute fish mixed with poison between 10 pm and 5 am. Officials said they would return each morning to collect any remaining bait, remove the bodies of dead dogs and transport them to landfill.
The operation was scheduled to continue until 31 July.
It was presented as necessary to protect Baubau from rabies. Yet the city’s own animal health official confirmed that Baubau remained rabies free. Although dog bites had been reported between January and July, none of the dogs investigated had been found to have rabies.
Healthy dogs were facing death by poison in the name of preventing a disease that had not been detected among them.
An Unsupported Claim Of Tens Of Thousands
Officials claimed that the number of roaming dogs in Baubau had increased to tens of thousands. No census, survey, methodology or supporting data was published.
The target of 2,000 dogs also appears to have been determined by the quantity of poisoned bait prepared for the operation not by veterinary assessments identifying 2,000 rabid, diseased or dangerous animals.
Residents were instructed to confine their dogs and cats during the night so they would not consume the poison intended for animals found on the streets.
That warning exposes the indiscriminate nature of the method. Poisoned bait cannot identify whether a dog is owned, abandoned, vaccinated, sterilised, healthy, sick or being cared for by members of the community. Nor can it prevent cats, wildlife or other animals from eating it.
The municipality’s proposed morning collection did not remove the risk created during the hours in which poisoned food would be left in public places.
The Operation Was Challenged
Animal Defenders Indonesia issued a formal legal notice to the mayor and the head of the municipal department, demanding that the poisoning be stopped.
The organisation called for Baubau to disclose the evidence behind its population claim and replace poisoning with vaccination, sterilisation and humane dog-population management.
The department subsequently reportedly confirmed in writing that the mass-elimination plan had been stopped. It said it would instead prioritise rabies vaccination and sterilisation.
Stopping the programme was the right decision, but it does not answer the most urgent question. Did dogs die before it was stopped?
The legal notice was not received until 31 July, the final day of the scheduled five night operation. The municipality has not published an operational report showing whether bait was distributed during any of the preceding nights. It hasn’t disclosed how much poison was issued, how much was recovered or whether any dogs bodies were taken to landfill.
Did The Plan Breach Indonesian Law?
Indonesia does not leave the treatment and killing of animals entirely to municipal discretion. Government Regulation No. 95 of 2012 on Veterinary Public Health and Animal Welfare establishes requirements that appear directly relevant to what Baubau proposed.
Article 95 requires an animal’s killing to be carried out without causing fear and stress and by a method that ends suffering as quickly as possible.
Article 96 states that when animals are killed for the control of infectious diseases or zoonoses, the decision must be based upon a veterinarian’s medical assessment.
Most significantly, Article 99 prohibits giving animals substances that cause poisoning, injury or death.
A programme that deliberately places poisoned food in public areas to kill unidentified dogs therefore appears extremely difficult to reconcile with these provisions. Baubau has not published individual veterinary assessments or evidence that the targeted dogs were infected with rabies. Its own official said the city remained free from the disease.
Whether the operation amounted to an enforceable legal violation would ultimately have to be determined by the relevant Indonesian authorities or a court. Nevertheless, the wording of the national regulation raises serious questions about how such a programme was authorised in the first place.
Poisoning Dogs Does Not Eliminate Rabies
Baubau’s plan also conflicts with the strategy Indonesia has adopted for eradicating human deaths caused by dog-mediated rabies.
The country’s national roadmap is built around vaccination, humane dog population management, surveillance, public education and rapid treatment for people exposed to potentially infected animals.
Killing dogs indiscriminately does not produce lasting protection from rabies. Removing animals without addressing vaccination coverage, breeding, abandonment and access to food merely creates space into which other unvaccinated dogs can move.
Poisoning can make successful disease control more difficult by frightening communities, driving dogs into hiding and destroying the cooperation needed for vaccination and surveillance.
Baubau had reportedly suspended its dog elimination programme during 2024 and 2025 because of insufficient funding. Its return in 2026 demonstrates that poisoning had remained an accepted municipal option despite Indonesia’s national animal-welfare requirements and rabies strategy.
Cancellation Cannot Be The End Of The Matter.
It is encouraging that public intervention appears to have stopped the programme and secured a pledge to vaccination and sterilisation. But a promise is not an outcome.
Baubau must now publish the authentic instruction authorising the operation, the written decision cancelling it and a complete account of anything that occurred between 27 and 31 July.
The city should disclose:
whether poisoned bait was distributed;
the dates and locations involved;
how much poison was prepared, issued, used and recovered;
whether any dogs or other animals died;
how the bodies of any dead animals were recorded and disposed of;
the veterinary and legal basis used to authorise the programme;
the evidence supporting the claim that Baubau has tens of thousands of roaming dogs; and
the timetable and funding allocated for vaccination and sterilisation.
Until those records are released, nobody can know whether the cancellation prevented the killing or merely ended an operation that had already claimed lives.
Indonesia remains on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map Watchlist. This case also shows why the country assessment cannot focus upon Bali alone. The official authorisation of mass poisoning in Southeast Sulawesi points towards a broader failure of policy, oversight and enforcement.
Baubau’s dogs were not evidence of a rabies outbreak. They were living animals condemned collectively because they were on the streets.
The operation may now have been stopped. The demand for answers must not be.
Update: Dog Desk Animal Action has written to the Mayor of Baubau requesting the authorisation and cancellation documents, confirmation of whether poisoned bait was distributed, and records showing whether any animals died. We have also requested details of the promised vaccination and sterilisation programme. Any response received will be published.