The looming closure of the infamous Macau greyhound racing track has raised fears for the lives of hundreds of exported Australian dogs.

A group of animal rights campaigners are lobbying Macau’s government to rescue greyhounds from the controversial Macau Canidrome, or Yat Yuen, before its slated closure in July.



The track is notorious for its cruel conditions and high death rates. Rescue groups say dogs are kept in poor conditions in a concrete compound, often in scorching temperatures while suffering skin conditions and untreated injuries.

The Macau-based animal welfare group Anima said Australia had traditionally been the chief supplier of greyhounds to the Canidrome.

Retired and unwanted Australian greyhounds were, until recently, regularly exported to Macau for profit.

The president of Anima, Albano Martins, said his best estimate was that about 650 greyhounds remained in the Canidrome, the majority of which were from Australia.

“In the 54 years of this Canidrome … around 360 greyhounds per year were bought mainly in NSW and only eight were placed for adoptions in all these 54 years – after 2012, when we began to fight them,” Martins told Guardian Australia.

Anima has joined other animal rights groups to fight to save the remaining dogs before the Canidrome closes. They fear the dogs will be killed or sent to underground tracks in mainland China, where greyhound racing is illegal.

The groups have gathered 50,000 signatures on a petition to the Macau government, asking it to help secure the dogs and place them in Anima’s care.

“The Canidrome of Macau is sadly known in the whole world as a place of death, where no greyhound gets out alive,” the petition reads. “Even now, when the Canidrome is due to close by 2018, the dogs are still continuing to live in shameful conditions and to die without hope.

“How many of them will be alive when it closes? What will happen to the survivors? These are worrying questions, and the answers that are given will undoubtedly have an effect on how Macau is perceived and consequently on its touristic development.”

Greyhounds Australasia banned exports to Macau in 2013 owing to high death rates and poor conditions. But the ban does not stop people gaining the approval of the federal department of agriculture to export the animals abroad.

Late last year three Australians were found to have shipped 96 dogs to the Canidrome track with the approval of the federal department, despite the ban.



The majority of the greyhounds were bought in New South Wales for $500 and sold for between $2,100 and $2,700. The trio estimated they made a profit of $300 a dog, after the costs of quarantine, vaccination, flights and boxes.

A study by the US-based animal protection group Grey2K estimated that 383 dogs had been put down in Macau in 2010.