By admin 
Rural Alaska has long struggled with an abundance of stray and loose dogs and high rates of dog bites, with young children as the most frequent victims.
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Pending state and federal legislation aims to chip away at that problem by improving access to veterinary care, currently difficult to obtain in wide swathes of Alaska.
At the state level, House Bill 258, sponsored by Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, would establish a state fund to help cover spay and neuter services. Money for the fund, intended to fill gaps in currently available care, would come from sales of specialized license plates, which other states offer, and donations. The fund would also generate its own investment income.
The intent is to relieve the stresses on animal welfare, people and communities, including local shelters that are “overwhelmed by the costs of animal control and care,” Stapp wrote in a statement explaining his sponsorship of the bill.
“This legislation takes a preventative, fiscally responsible approach to an issue that affects communities throughout Alaska,” the statement concludes.
The bill has attracted three cosponsors and support from the animal-care community, Alaska Veterinary Medical Association and the Alaska Municipal League, among other groups.
At the federal level, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is pushing for legislation to get veterinary care included in the duties of the Indian Health Service. At present, the agency does not have the authority to pay for veterinarian care.
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Murkowski’s bill has three Democratic cosponsors, from New Mexico, Hawaii and Minnesota, all states with significant Indigenous populations that are served by the IHS. It passed the Senate in December and is now pending in the House. A nearly identical measure sponsored by Murkowski and the same Democratic colleagues passed the Senate in late 2024, but it died before time ran out on that Congress.
The bill has support from Native organizations — including the Alaska Federation of Natives, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and the Navajo Nation, which is coping with problems in its tribal areas that are similar to those in Alaska.
It is an approach backed by experts as part of the “One Health” framework that considers human, animal and environmental health as linked.
“Veterinarians play an integral role in One Health because animals both impact and are impacted by people and the environment,” the American Veterinary Medical Association says on its website.
Human health impacts
Dogs are part of life in Alaska, where travel by dogsled is an aspect of Indigenous cultures. But problems caused by abandoned, stray and loose dogs are myriad.
Alaska consistently has the nation’s highest rate of dog bites, according to state officials. The rate of dog-bite cases treated in hospitals has been especially high in rural areas; a 2014 said that rate in Southwest and Northern Alaska was two to three times the national rate. Children are at particular risk. And 2009 research, albeit dated, found that Alaska had the highest per-capita rate of fatal dog maulings among all states, with a rate more than 16 times the national average.
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