Advocacy needed
Support, fund animal welfare
When overcrowding prompts public animal shelters to euthanize animals, it is the community’s fault and not the fault of shelter administrators or their employees. Those who criticize this solution to overcrowding ignore their own responsibility for these deaths.
Simply put, two issues govern whether a shelter kills healthy, nonvicious animals: lack of funding and animal overpopulation.
Regarding lack of funding, while private shelters with limited funds may refuse to accept animals to avoid overcrowding, that is not true for many government-run (public) shelters. As is often the case, public shelters must legally accept all animals brought to them by community residents.
If funding for expansion of public shelters does not increase as a community’s human and animal populations increase, shelters may become overcrowded.
To achieve no-kill-shelter status, the solutions to lack of funding are to raise taxes and to increase voluntary contributions to sufficiently cover the cost of shelter expansion. Because animal welfare support claims few community contributions or advocates, however, public shelters necessarily kill perfectly adoptable animals.
To help prevent such killings, taxpayers should consider voluntary contributions for animal welfare. Some Arkansas county tax bills contain options for such contributions, but relatively few taxpayers contribute. For example, in Saline County, last year’s voluntary contribution rate for “animal care and control” was 37 percent, the highest rate in three of the six most populous Arkansas counties.
In contrast, tax records for the other two most populous counties that have voluntary options for animal welfare support show much lower contribution rates.
Pulaski County’s highest contribution rate for the county’s animal control spay/neuter tax in the last two years was 6.04 percent in 2017; and in Faulkner County, which offers separate voluntary options for both county and city animal welfare, last year’s contribution rates were 3.51 percent and 4.97 percent, respectively.
Tax forms in the remaining six most populous counties do not have options for voluntary animal welfare contributions, but despite this, residents still may donate directly to all animal welfare services in their county.
These voluntary tax contribution rates, even with a county high of 37 percent, are not worthy; to prevent the deaths of adoptable animals, communities must do better, with taxpayers and other residents participating at much higher levels.
Concerning the issue of animal overpopulation, all community members may take several actions to help reduce animal population explosions. Not only can they keep their own pets from reproducing, but they can help fund efforts to spay and neuter shelter animals.
The bottom line is that the journeys of healthy, nonvicious animals picked up by animal control officers or delivered to animal shelters by well-meaning people do not have to end in death.
That some journeys do end in death is not because shelter employees want to kill animals. As noted above, it generally is a question of funding, for not enough money is appropriated to publicly funded shelters to ensure a happy ending for all members of adoptable populations.
According to a 2019 online posting by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, estimates for the years 2016-2018 indicate that approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized every year (670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats). On a positive note, in a 2017 posting, the ASPCA reported the number of dogs and cats euthanized in U.S. shelters annually had declined from approximately 2.6 million in 2011.
In the final analysis, it’s up to every community member to prevent euthanasia of adoptable pets. Prevention may be accomplished by increased funding and contributions, increased spaying and neutering of all dogs and cats, and increased community awareness of the issues.
Let’s replace shelter criticism with shelter advocacy and community action.