Bardot 'saves' Bucharest's dogs

Bardot and the mayor agree to sterilise the dogs

French film and animal rights activist star Brigitte Bardot has signed a deal with the mayor of the Romanian capital Bucharest to save about 100,000 stray dogs from death.

Ms Bardot has agreed to donate more than $140,000 over two years for a mass sterilisation and adoption programme for the city's strays, estimated to number 300,000.

The massive killing is finished now

Brigitte Bardot

For his part the mayor of Bucharest, Traian Basescu, has agreed to kill only dangerous, old or terminally ill dogs.

Mr Basescu had earlier insisted that the dogs, which bite up to 50 people a day in the city of two million people, must be exterminated.

Dog saviour

"The massive killing is finished now," Ms Bardot announced, adding she had done "a little more than everybody else" to save the dogs.

The city has more than 300,000 strays

Mayor Basescu agreed: "Her support, compared to others is more effective."

Under the agreement, Mr Basescu has set aside about $1.5m to hire catchers to round up and delouse the dogs.

The sterilisation and vaccination process will be set up by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation and the Vienna-based foundation Vier Pfoten (Four Paws).

The strays will be held for 10 days in pounds around Bucharest, where Ms Bardot believes people will be happy to adopt them. She herself has promised to take in any unwanted dogs.

'Like children'

"We have to convince the people of Bucharest, who are dog lovers, to treat dogs like they treat their children and not just let them roam the streets," Ms Bardot said.

Stray dogs are everywhere in the Romanian capital, roaming in packs on waste ground and gathering outside public buildings, private homes and blocks of flats.

The problem began when a large residential area of the city was destroyed by the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in the mid 1980s.

Since then, dog numbers have multiplied and successive city councils have done little more than make a dent in the problem.