Roper Gulf Regional Council (RGRC) delivers a wide range of municipal services, community services and programs within one of the most remote areas of the Northern Territory. The Council’s area spans an area almost three times the size of Tasmania. Within this area, Roper Gulf council operates a companion animal management program across 14 remote Indigenous communities. Given the breadth of work and geographical space in which the council operates, Roper Gulf often collaborates with AMRRIC to provide veterinary and education programs to communities.
AMRRIC (Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities) is a national not-for-profit organisation that advocates and coordinates culturally safe veterinary and education programs in rural and remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Roper Gulf and AMRRIC promote a model of service delivery, developed over years of dialogue and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, that recognises companion animals as being intrinsic to the fabric of the community and acknowledges the inseparable link between the health and wellbeing of companion animals and that of their owners and their communities.
Such communities often experience high levels of socioeconomic hardship, and an inclusive veterinary community includes providing service to the lowest socioeconomic communities across Australia.
This presentation will discuss the challenges often encountered during programs, including large travel distances, food costs, barriers to adequate nutrition and feeding, pet abandonment, disease, and problems associated with fitting animal management goals and operations in remote communities into a western framework of dog ownership. Roper Gulf’s animal management works to overcome these challenges to provide an effective and holistic service to these communities and their animals. Part of this service is recognising the critical role education plays, as well as veterinary services, in incremental social change. This involves collaborating often with AMRRIC to provide this aspect of animal management services.
27 окт 2023
