Euthanasia for Lack of Space and Shelter Transparency

Bones

Anyone remotely associated with the animal rescue movement over the past ten years would agree that we have made enormous progress. Not long ago, the majority of animals turned into shelters didn't make it out alive, and not due to any unsolvable medical or behavioral failings of their own. 
















Today, a quick Google search reveals that about 2.4 million "healthy, adoptable" dogs and cats are euthanized each year, and many shelters in unlikely communities are releasing more than 90% of their animals "out the front door," alive and into adoptive homes, rescues, or sanctuaries. These shelters often rightly advertise their save rates, proclaiming that they are no longer euthanizing for lack of space.

Just a few years ago, the number of animals euthanized was closer to 4 million--so we are making enormous progress, and fast.  But if you work or volunteer in a shelter, or if you are heavily involved in animal rescue, it is natural to question these numbers. 

Lima Bean

What does a 90% live release rate really mean?


















Does it mean that 90% of adoptable animals are really leaving through the front door? 

Or does it just mean that "adoptable" has a new, more narrow definition? Does it mean, by any chance, that a healthy pit bull who loves other dogs and loves people, can be euthanized because he has some separation anxiety, or barks a lot, or is having trouble with housetraining, and is therefore "unadoptable"?

Does it mean that animals whose owners request euthanasia, can be killed without altering the shelter's proclaimed bottom line--even if the request is prompted by behavioral issues that may be relatively simple to address? If the shelter euthanizes those animals without conducting its own evaluation and attempting its own interventions, should the shelter's "live release rate" be unaffected? 

And if, once we get answers to these questions, we find that a shelter is in fact euthanizing for lack of space, the next question is why? 

Why would a shelter with a number of empty kennels euthanize for lack of space? 

Why wouldn't a shelter house compatible animals in pairs or small groups, to dramatically reduce stress and accommodate more? 

Why not aggressively promote foster programs, and let existing fosters know when help is needed? 

Penny

Why does a shelter, like Prince George's County Animal Management Division in Maryland, euthanize around 6,000 animals a year when there is a demand for roughly 27,000 pets every year in that county, and the shelter makes available for adoption only around 9,000 animals? 





(And incidentally, why in God's name is PGAMD closed on Sundays, which may be the only day working people have available to look for a pet?)

Of course there are lots of possible reasons. Shelters are understaffed, underfunded, they can't afford enough trained staff to do all the behavior modification that would save lives. 


Potential adopters want a purebred dog, they want a puppy, they want a goldendoodle.

And of course, some shelters are undoubtedly succeeding despite all that, and have every reason to trumpet their high live release rates because they are real and the result of a lot of hard work. 

NuNu

The Washington Humane Society in Washington, DC has seen enormous progress in its live release rate in large part due to the success of its phenomenal Trap-Neuter-Return program for feral cats. The many communities that lack these programs will be hard-pressed to reduce their euthanasia rates...a fact that DC's Department of Energy and the Environment should consider as it contemplates rolling back TNR as part of its proposed Wildlife Action Plan. 





Some communities of course face far more challenges than others in saving lives, such as densely populated urban areas and areas that suffer from a dearth of pet-friendly housing. Prince George's County is among several that still have pit bull bans on the books, meaning that all pit bull-type dogs that come in the county shelter's doors face euthanasia if they are not rescued by an entity from outside the county. Situations such as this of course pose a monumental challenge to getting the majority of animals out alive. 

To raise questions about live release rates and transparency is not to minimize the enormous efforts that many shelters have made to save lives, nor is it to suggest that achieving save rates near 100% is an easy task. It is merely to demand that claims about shelter successes be accompanied by complete, clear definitions of terms used, and articulation of the challenges that remain.

Shelters should not fear being honest with their volunteers, adopters, and even their staff about the grim realities of not being there yet with respect to No Kill. An increasingly educated public will increasingly demand that they do so anyway. Getting out in front of that trend will only encourage loyalty from those who understand both the challenges, and also the ultimate feasibility, of achieving live release rates that blow away all notions of what we once thought was possible.

Shelter workers

I was at the shelter the other day volunteering, and thinking about the people who work there every day and are evidently--from the way they talk to the animals and interact with them--as in love with them as I am. As a volunteer, I get to walk the dogs, play with the cats, give them treats, and each week see the happy lists of who got adopted. I get to walk away in blissful ignorance of who won't be there tomorrow, who just failed an evaluation, who got returned by an adopter again and isn't going to be given another chance. The people who work there have no such luxury. 

I realized today that whatever my strengths as a rescuer and animal advocate, this is not one of them. I'd go to bed every night an emotional wreck, my house would fill up with animals, I'd be in tears on the job, I'd avoid the parts of the shelter where the doomed animals wait.

I'm amazed by the people I see working at the shelter. Most of them are young, hip-looking women, who look like the protest-goers who peer-pressured me to go vegetarian in high school. They don't look like they're made of steel, but maybe they are. How else could they do it?

Or maybe the shelter is really living up to its goal of being a city-run, open-admission shelter that achieves 100% adoption of adoptable animals. Or maybe somewhere in between. 


I do agree with Nathan Winograd--although I don't agree with him on everything--that not all shelter workers are doing everything they should be doing to save lives. But those who are, who work in shelters because they really do love animals and commit their every day to making their lives better, are possessed of a superhuman strength and are deserving of thanks and admiration.

No Kill and Conservation

I have always been an animal lover and advocate, and I have always been a tree hugger and conservationist. No way to tell which came first; they are part of the same thing. 

To me, it seems perfectly natural that if you grew up loving furry animals, you'd want to conserve habitat to help other furry animals grow and thrive. If you love nature and feel motivated to protect it, of course you'd feel an affinity for the creatures who live in it. 


So you may imagine my consternation when I started encountering people who were in one camp, and not only disinterested in the other but actually hostile to it.


In graduate school, I was part of a group tasked with figuring out management options for addressing the toll of invasive species on native wildlife in New Zealand. In many island ecosystems, introduced species--commonly rats, cats, and possums--have had a devastating impact on native wildlife, decimating the many native endemic species of ground-nesting birds and others who have no defense against these predators.


This project seemed like a perfect opportunity to me to see what humane options are out there for dealing with nonnative wildlife to protect indigenous species. 

I was surprised with the vitriol with which some of my colleagues said we should "just shoot 'em," which seemed not only a cruel way to deal with cats and rats but also an inefficient one. A little bit of digging uncovered some fascinating work being done on Virus-Vectored Immunosterilization for nonnative species--a sort of hands-off TNR program for feral animals--and this ended up being the approach our group advocated. 


At the other end of the spectrum are animal advocates who have not taken the trouble to inform themselves of basic tenets of ecosystem science. Nathan Winograd, a prominent No Kill advocate who is addressed in an excellent letter by Edie at Will My Dog Hate Me?, says that simply by virtue of being there first, native wildlife have no precedence over the nonnatives who have taken over. 

www.publiclandsranching.org

A Survival of the Fittest ethic that I suppose means American pioneers were perfectly justified in giving smallpox-covered blankets to Native Americans, and the Manifest Destiny that drove native bison to near extinction as cowboys and their stock took over the American West was not the least bit morally suspect. 



An ethic that, if brought to its natural conclusion, will leave us humans to enjoy our kudzu-filled and brown tree snake-infested gardens free from the trill of songbirds and the wonder and complexity of native, functioning ecosystems. 




While I absolutely embrace the concept of No Kill and am grateful for the growing awareness of its possibility and the simple steps that make it possible, (Check out the great list at In Black & White, for example) I do feel that a proponent of such an important movement needs to be much more thoughtful before venturing into territory where his knowledge is so lacking and his views could be used to justify so much ecological havoc. 


Animal rights advocates and conservationists are natural allies, and we should be working harder at nurturing a symbiosis rather than advocating for each other's extinction.