A local government in rural Australia fatally shot several impounded rescue dogs over coronavirus concerns

• A local government in Australia is taking heat for putting down 15 shelter dogs to mitigate COVID.
• The council issued the order to prevent employees at a shelter from traveling to obtain the dogs.
• Ten of the fifteen dogs were puppies, and another had just given birth to a litter of her own.

A local government in rural Australia fatally shot 15 shelter-bound rescue dogs in a drastic attempt to protect volunteer workers from contracting COVID-19 while traveling to pick up the animals last week.

Bourke Shire Council in the north of New South Wales issued the order to prevent employees at another shelter about 125 miles away from traveling back and forth to obtain the dogs, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, which first reported the incident on Sunday.

Ten of the fifteen dogs were puppies, and another had just given birth to a litter of her own, USA Today reported.

In a statement to The Herald, the Bourke Shire Council said the local pound had reached capacity and two of the dogs were exhibiting aggressive behavior toward each other and staffers. The group said the person usually in charge of rehousing the animals had also become unavailable ahead of the euthanizing.

The Office of Local Government, which serves as a local watchdog for the Bourke Shire Council, told the outlet that the agency is looking into the incident to determine whether companion animal and cruelty prevention laws were broken.

"OLG has been informed that the council decided to take this course of action to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission," a spokesperson from the Office of Local Government told The Herald.

All of New South Wales remains under lockdown due to surging COVID-19 amid an outbreak of the delta variant. The state has urged residents to remain in their own local government region and to avoid travel in order to mitigate the spread.

"The town is in a tenuous situation at the moment with COVID," the Bourke Shire Council told The New York Times. "Positive cases are on the increase. Council is being very careful with people entering Bourke."

The council did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Animal-welfare workers are considered "authorized workers" and exempt from the state's COVID-19 restrictions while doing their jobs, according to The Washington Post.

While more than 4,800 coronavirus cases have been reported in New South Wales over the past week, according to state data, Bourke has recorded only seven COVID-19 cases in that time, while Cobar, the town where the shelter volunteers were coming from, recorded just one case.

Emma Hurst, a state lawmaker from the Animal Justice Party, told media outlets she and her office had worked tirelessly to try and save the dogs ahead of their euthanization, but were told by the council's general manager that the choice to put the pups down had already been made.

"This is just absolutely heartbreaking - to think of these lost or abandoned animals not even having a chance to find a loving forever home," Hurst told USA Today.