Category: Stray & Feral Animals

WHO’S FIXING PET OVERPOPULATION?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

The following table lists the number of
dogs and cats killed per thousand humans in
North American cities, counties, and states
where complete recent counts are available.
Immense regional differences are readily
apparent, with the lowest ratios clustered in
the Northeast and the highest in the South,
except around Washington D.C.
The low Northeastern and Washington
D.C. area figures would appear to be associated
with high urban populations, apartment living
and resultant low pet ownership rates; cold winters,
the D.C. area excepted, which depress the
survival rate of late-born feral kittens and also
suppress estrus in dogs and cats, decreasing the
frequency with which they bear litters; a relatively
strong humane infrastructure to encourage neutering;

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ANIMAL CARE AND CONTROL, RESCUE, AND ALTERNATIVES TO KILLING

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

Management
Indianapolis police lieutenant
John H. Walton on August 2 took over as
director of the city Animal Control Division.
Lieutenant Spencer Moore, director since
1993, was reassigned at his own request to
Youth Services. Public safety director Alan
Handt, M.D., said the shifts were “unrelated
to recent complaints” about shelter operations
aired in June by the Indianapolis Star News.
Walton, wrote Star News reporter Bonnie
Harris, “comes to his new position with no
animal control experience. Walton ran into
difficulties in 1995, when he was charged
with raping a female acquaintance. A jury
acquitted him in April 1996; however, the
Indianapolis Civilian Police Merit Board
found Walton had violated departmental rules
in connection with the incident. As a result,
he was suspended for two months and demoted
to sergeant,” winning promotion back to lieutenant
just before his reassignment.

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CVMA to fix 60,000 feral cats

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

ALAMEDA, California––Maddie’s Fund, the $200 million
foundation formed by PeopleSoft founders Dave and Cheryl Duffield to
promote no-kill animal control, on August 2 announced a grant of $3.2 million
to the California Veterinary Medical Association, “to spay or neuter
60,000 additional feral cats in California” above and beyond the number
altered in 1998.
“The first phase of the project begins today,” a joint release
issued by Maddie’s Fund and the CVMA stated. “The CVMA anticipates it
will complete all three phases by June 2002.”
Participating veterinarians are to receive $50 per surgery.
Administrative costs are estimated at $70,000 per year.
Feral cats are defined as those who “generally do not voluntarily
accept handling by humans, and are ‘feral, independent wildlife’ or ‘feral,
interdependent free-roaming/unowned,’” as described by longtime Cat
Fanciers Association board member Joan Miller in a 1993 article for the
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

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Editorial: Scapegoating alien invaders for real-world trouble

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

The beaver-like nutria, apart from being a mammal and a vegetarian, does not much
resemble a goat. Yet St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, following the earlier example of
Jefferson Parish and the self-serving 10-year-old doctrine of the Louisiana Department of
Wildlife and Fisheries, has now officially begun to treat nutria as an all-purpose scapegoat for
infrastructure damage.
Late on July 20, five members of the St. Bernard Parish SWAT team shot 20 nutria
in a public park. The shooting amounted, however, to little more than target practice, possibly
doing more to discourage after-hours human park traffic than to cut the nutria population.
Jefferson Parish police have shot nutria by the thousand since 1995. Yet Jefferson
Parish still seems to have as many nutria as ever, because the habitat still favors them, and
any successful species tends to breed up to the carrying capacity of the habitat, countering
predation by breeding faster. More intense predation brings faster breeding still.

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U.N., U.S. plan world war on feral wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

TOKYO––Representatives of the 175 nations that
have endorsed the United Nations Convention on Biological
Diversity––including the U.S.––are to assemble in Nairobi,
Kenya, in May 2000 to draft guidelines for purging and blocking
the spread of alleged invasive species. The guidelines are
to be presented for ratification by the CBD members in 2001.
Once ratified, they could constitute a global mandate
in support of the forthcoming recommendations of the cabinetlevel
Invasive Species Council created by U.S. President Bill
Clinton on February 2, under orders to “mobilize the federal
government to defend against aggressive predators and pests.”
The mobilization is to be underway by August 2000.
The definition of “aggressive predators and pests”
addressed by both the CBD and Invasive Species Council could
include––among many other species––feral cats; feral pigs;
the mountain goats of Olympic National Park in Washington
state; street pigeons; starlings; the parrot colonies of San
Francisco, Florida, and the New York City metropolitan area;
and all wild horses and burros on public land except Bureau of
Land Management holdings, where they enjoy limited “squatters’
rights” under the 1971 Wild And Free Ranging Horse and
Burro Protection Act.

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Election may have brought good news for the Kiev SPA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

KIEV, Ukraine––Kiev Society for the Protection
of Animals president Tamara Tarnawska is taking as good
news the May 28 re-election of three-year incumbent Kiev
mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko.
“Shortly after being re-elected,” Tarnawska told
ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 6, “Omelchenko called a meeting
to review the work of the Animals In The City center,”
the animal control department he formed in September 1997,
five months after closing the dog-and-cat pelting plant which
had killed strays since Czarist times, and giving the site to the
Kiev SPA for use as the first humane shelter in the Ukraine.

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Animal control, rescue, sheltering, and alternatives to population control killing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

The fifth year of the San Francisco
Adoption Pact, completed on March 31,
dropped the combined San Francisco Department
of Animal Care and Control and San
Francisco SPCA euthanasia toll to a new low
of 3,688 dogs and cats. The SF/DACC euthanized
2,526 dogs and cats due to irrecoverable
injury, illness, or aggressive behavior, and
1,162 for other reasons, most often that they
were neonatal kittens with possible upper respiratory
disease and––though some might have
recovered with much care, a poor prognosis.
The SF/DACC returned 1,472 dogs and cats
to their owners, adopted out 1,833, and sent
2,482 to the SF/SPCA. “Of these,” said the
SF/SPCA, “1,598 had special impediments,
often requiring medical or behavioral care
prior to adoption,” as did “932 of the 2,643
dogs and cats whom the SF/SPCA accepted
directly from the public.” The SF/SPCA
returned 29 dogs and cats to their owners, and
adopted out 4,971. The San Francisco rate of
shelter killing, already the lowest of any major
U.S. city, dropped to 5.01 per 1,000 residents.

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Eastern Europe and Southern U.S. cities share animal control crisis

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1999:

WARSAW, Poland; Southern
states, U.S.––“A series of articles in the
nationally circulated newspaper Zycie
Warszawy about the Paluch animal shelter
[recently] shocked the public” with allegations
of “horrible sanitary conditions, lack of care
and rigid treatment of animals, widespread
disease, and extensive animal killing,”
Warsaw Committee in Defense of Animals
members Aniela Roehr and Anna Chodakowska
charged in a globally distributed May
17 e-mail, seeking help from the international
animal protection community.
Managed by a foundation set up in
January 1997, subsidized by Warsaw and surrounding
suburbs, the Paluch shelter reportedly
has the same conflicts of history, mission,
and public expectation as the animal care-andcontrol
apparatus in Kiev, Ukraine (page
13)––and as do the animal care-and-control
agencies in much of the U.S., as well.

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ANIMAL CONTROL

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

Thailand is stepping up a six-year
drive to eradicate rabies. In 1998, says the
Thai government, 3.3 million of the estimated
5.2 million Thai dogs were vaccinated,
700,000 were sterilized by injection (method
not specified), and 165,000 were surgically
sterilized. Only 200,000 free vaccinations
were done, but this year 1.5 million dogs will
be vaccinated without charge, while one million
are to receive the injection sterilant and
238,650 are to be surgically sterilized.

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