Lanta Animal Welfare, Koh Lanta

Lanta Animal Welfare is a not for profit charity that was established in 2005 by Junie Kovacs. Junie is from Norway and was only visiting Koh Lanta for a holiday, but she fell in love with the island and all of the animals.

Junie saw how many stray cats and dogs there were, and she wanted to help them. It was getting to the point where there were too many animals so they were having to fight each other for the limited amount of food and love on the island. On an island there is only so much food and love to go around.

Junie’s mission was to end the suffering of the stray cats and dogs living on the island so she set up Lanta Animal Welfare.

Obviously a lot of money is needed to set up something like this so Junie had to be creative. She set up the first cooking school on the island called Time for Lime. This brought in lots of money and Lanta Animal Welfare was born.

Time for Lime did used to be on a much bigger scale. It was down by the beach and there were bungalows that people could pay to stay in. Sadly this was all washed away in the tsunami and it couldn’t be rebuilt on the same scale due to lack of funds. Time for Lime does still exist but as a smaller entity next to Lanta Animal Welfare.

Visitors can pay around £5 to have a 1 hour tour of Lanta Animal Welfare. The tour is focused on education of visitors rather than visitors getting to spend lots of time playing with the animals.

In the past, particularly when there weren’t as many tours during COVID 19, visitors could walk the dogs and take them out. This just isn’t possible now due to volume of visitors so they have changed their focus to education and also adoption. Many people do fall in love with the animals there during the tour and the animals are then able to find their forever home.

Kitty City-

As the name suggests this is where all the cats live at Lanta Animal Welfare. It is the first place that visitors go to on the tour.

When we visited there were only around 8 cats there which is good because it means there aren’t lots of cats who need help! In the past they have had over 30 cats which is crazy to imagine all those cats in one area.

In South East Asia you will see a lot of cats with shorty stubby tails or not really a tail at all. We had thought they had been cut off or maybe been in an accident. We learnt that it is actually due to inbreeding. On islands such as Koh Phi Phi there are no new cats coming to the island so all of the cats who are related to each other will breed with each other. The short tail is natures way of saying that there is a problem and that there are too many cats. The cats are otherwise healthy, only a bit funny looking!

Lanta Animal Welfare focus on sterilising as many cats as possible to stop more and more kittens being born. Cats can actually carry two litters at the same time and can breed from being 4 months old so it doesn’t take long before there are kittens everywhere.

Lanta Animal Welfare offer free sterilisation onsite where local people can bring their cats, and they also go out everyday to catch and sterilise cats. The cats are also vaccinated at the same time. One sterilised and vaccinated they are given a little tattoo inside their ear with the number on the needle that was used. This is so time isn’t wasted catching the same animal twice!

The dogs-

There are kennels where dogs can stay if they need to be on their own and there are also larger kennels where several dogs can be together. These are outside but secured. There is lots of space inside for the dogs to run around and play, and lots of places where they can find shade from the hot sun.

We walked around the kennels to see the dogs there and it was very noisy! There was lots of barking with all of the dogs saying hello to us. These dogs are all up for adoption so are just waiting for their forever home.

There were two dogs who had free roam of the place who aren’t able to be adopted for various health reasons. They are allowed to roam around so they can be around people and socialise all day as they will never leave Lanta Animal Welfare to be adopted.

Lanta Animal Welfare has the same goals around sterilisation with the dogs as it does with cats. They offer free sterilisation there for locals to bring their dogs, and they go out every day to catch the stray dogs to sterilise and vaccinate them. Once sterilised and vaccinated they will take a small piece of skin from the dogs ear to signify that they have already been done.

Intensive care-

There is an intensive care unit at Lanta Animal Welfare which is where all of the animals there start their journey. Cats and dogs will arrive with a variety of injuries and illnesses. Some go through the unit very quickly and others need to spend longer there.

We had a quick walk through the unit and saw a few dogs who were resting in there. These dogs were all undergoing chemotherapy so were very tired.

We were shown some incredible before and after pictures of animals who have been through the intensive care unit.

One that stood out to me was a cat who had had hot oil thrown at him when she snuck into a local man’s kitchen to steal some food. The cat had horrific burns. It was around the same time as Australia was having bad wild fires and lots of people were getting burnt so they called up some doctors in Australia. They suggested doing a fish skin graft.

In simple terms this involved skinning a fish, letting the fish skin cells die otherwise the cats immune system would reject them, and grafting the fish skin onto the cat. The graft was successful and the cats fur even grew back over the fish skin. I thought this was amazing and demonstrated the lengths that Lanta Animal Welfare go to to help these animals.

X-Ray room-

One of the most common injuries for cats and dogs on Koh Lanta is broken bones from being hit by a bike or car.

Lanta Animal Welfare now have an X-ray room that was very kindly donated by Dogs Trust. They did try for years to fundraise enough money themselves but this proved very difficult.

Having the X-ray room means that injured animals can be X-rayed immediately meaning their limbs and lives can be saved. It avoids the need to take them by boat and car to the mainland which takes hours. During this time they can die.

Adoption and flight volunteers-

The other main focus, aside from mass sterilisation, is adoption. Some cats and dogs are medically fit and happy to return to living on the streets, but for some it isn’t an option. This could be because of medical/health reasons or because of trauma they have experienced.

Lanta Animal Welfare aims to get these animals adopted. This happens most often when people visit as part of a tour and fall in love with one of the animals.

Of course the animals have to then travel to their new home, and more often than not this will involve going on a plane. Lanta Animal Welfare take care of all of the organising and paperwork so it is made as easy as possible for people to adopt.

They aren’t able to send their staff on flights with the animals because of the expense this would incur. What they do instead is they ask for flight volunteers. These are people who are flying to the same destination as the adopted animal and are happy to help the animal get there.

When you visit the sanctuary there is a board up where all of the adopted animals and their destinations are listed. Being a flight volunteer would be a great thing to do to help an animal get to their new home.

Why should you visit?

I really enjoyed visiting Lanta Animal Welfare when we were in Koh Lanta. I did originally think that we would get more time with the animals, but I now understand why this doesn’t happen. There are too many visitors each day so it would be too much for the animals and too much for the staff to manage.

I think they definitely have their focus right on educating people and raising awareness for what they are doing. It’s incredible to hear how much of a difference they have made on Koh Lanta in the last 20 years.

It’s a great place to visit and see, and by visiting you’re supporting the amazing work that they do each day. Also you never know, you might fall in love with one of the cats or dogs who are looking for their forever home.