ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:
Fixing the problem
Vancouver, British Columbia,
officially went to no-kill animal control
effective October 1, after killing only 74
dogs in 1997. The announcement brought
the surge of owner surrenders that typically
follows publicity about a no-kill policy,
causing crowding which pound director
Barbara Fellnermayr predicted would be
only temporary. The volunteer group
Animal Advocates has pledged to expand a
fostering program to handle the overflow.
Animal Advocates reportedly already has
about 50 active fostering families, who
have enabled the West Vancouver SPCA
to “virtually stop killing adoptable dogs,”
wrote Robert Sarti of the Vancouver Sun.
The Vancouver pound does not handle cats.
Other Vancouver-area shelters, Sarti said,
are killing about 1,000 dogs and 8,000 cats
per year, for a total local shelter killing rate
of circa 5.0 per 1,000 human residents––
comparable to the rates in San Francisco
and New York City, 5.8 each, which are
the lowest rates of any comparable North
American metropolitan areas. The second
lowest shelter killing rate in Canada is 6.9,
in Calgary. The highest is 43.3, in
Montreal. Shelter killing in the Vancouver
area peaked in 1974, at 45,345, and has
reportedly fallen relative to the human population
every year since the British
Columbia SPCA opened the first local lowcost
neutering clinic in 1976. The numbers
of animals killed have remained close to
9,000 since 1989, but the number of human
households in the Vancouver area has
increased by more than 25% over the same
10 years.
The Fund for Animals, best
known for wildlife protection, has become
one of the largest low-cost neutering
providers worldwide as well, with fixedsite
clinics in New York City, Houston,
and Dallas, and mobile clinics in Houston
and San Antonio. The New York City and
Dallas clinics are each doing more than
5,000 sterilization surgeries per year.
The Humane Society of Gallatin
V a l l e y, noted for bringing no-kill animal
control to Bozeman, Montana, has
received an award of $10,000 from the Pet
Savers Foundation as the 1998
Adoptathon participant which most accurately
predicted the total number of
Adoptathon placements, worldwide.
Boosting staff by 11% and budgeting
$17,000 for advertising, the
Chicago Commission on Animal Care
and Control aims to boost adoptions to
4,000 in 1999––twice the 1993 level. The
effort is to be assisted by the volunteer
group Pets Are Worth Saving, founded
and chaired by Paula Fasseas. The
Chicago CACC shelter handled 22,000 animals
in 1997, killing 20,000. The Chicago
area per capita killing rate of 9.8 animals
per 1,000 humans is about half the U.S.
norm, but the percentages of animals
received by the major area shelters who are
killed tend toward the high end of the scale.
About 30 members of the
Redwood Empire Veterinary Medical
Association donated about $20,000 in supplies
and services to the fifth annual SpayA-Thon
in Sonoma County, California,
which reportedly fixed about 250 female
cats and 150 toms. The females were operated
on at participating veterinary hospitals,
while the males were done at the S o n o m a
County Animal Regulation shelter and at
the Humane Society of Sonoma County.
The event is coordinated by D e b o r a h
Crippen, DVM, of the L a k e s i d e
Veterinary Hospital in Santa Rosa.
Trouble
Humane Animal Care Services,
a nonprofit affiliate of Animal Care
Equipment and Services, on October 4
lost the shelter management contract it had
held since July 1997 with the city of
Watsonville, California. The Watsonville
police took over interim management of the
$400,000 shelter, which HACS vice president
Bill Meade helped to design, and
indicated it would bid on a longterm contract.
Watsonville administrative services
director Eric Frost told John Woolfolk of
the San Jose Mercury-News that HACS did
a poor job of resolving animal-related
neighborhood disputes. Countered Mead,
“We told them they’d have to hire one more
person to satisfy the need. Their solution
was to fire the contractor.” Meade said four
fulltime animal control officers were needed,
but the contract paid for only three, at
salaries of under $20,000 apiece.
Roger Burrows, assistant
director of the Centre for Housing Policy
at the Univeristy of York, reported on
October 29 that face-to-face interviews with
residents of 20 million British households
found that 16% named dogs as their leading
source of “neighborhood dissatisfaction,”
second only to crime, named by 22%.
Further, Burrows found, fear of dog bites
and complaints about dog feces had little to
do with it. “The main source of dissatisfaction,”
he said, “is barking from dogs who
are locked up all day in apartments.”
Snails’ Best Friends
Indiana University conservation
biologist Vicky Meretsky on August 27
announced she had found about 1,000 specimens
of the endangered Oxyloma haydeni
kanabensis ambersnail at the Best Friends
Animal Sanctuary in Angel Canyon, near
Kanab, Utah––where it was first scientifically
described, in 1910, but was believed
to have become extinct during the 52 years
that the canyon was used as a film set,
1924-1976. Best Friends bought the site in
1984. The ambersnails have also been
found at Vasey’s Paradise, in the Grand
Canyon, and at Three Lakes Canyon, three
miles from Angel Canyon, where their
presence in 1991 blocked development of
an RV park and became a wise-use c a u s e
c e l e b r e. Best Friends offered to accept
relocation of the jeopardized snails, but the
property owner reportedly refused to part
with them, apparently hoping he would
receive a cash payment from the U.S. government
for not destroying their habitat.
