A crisis of “shelter” managers’ own making

I received this email through The No Kill Advocacy Center:

Since 2020, when spaying and neutering were no longer essential surgeries, we have faced a nationwide crisis. Abandoned, unwanted, or the inability to care for pets is rising at alarming rates, causing euthanasia to rise at alarming rates. The No Kill movement in 2022/2023/2024 is creating unintended consequences for our local shelter, which tells me that others are also trying to maintain their no kill status at the risk of public safety and animal safety. I am the founder of a nonprofit rescue organization. We are drowning — code red is the reality — euthanasia is the “threat,” and rescue groups are frantically trying to save as many as possible with adoptions and funding down. However, shelters don’t want to lose their “no kill award,” which is not helping the crisis. How are you addressing this?¹

Given that it touches on claims that many rescuers and pound managers are making and mirrors what newspapers across the country are reporting, I want to share my response more widely to explain why it is so off the mark and, more importantly, feeds a growing killing apologia, anti-No Kill backlash, and unwarranted misanthropy.

Before I discuss the merits of the comment, there are two threshold matters. First, the rescuer has The No Kill Advocacy Center, my organization, confused with Best Friends Animal Society. The No Kill Advocacy Center does not give out awards. By contrast, Best Friends does — including to those agencies that either kill healthy and treatable animals or turn them away. It also gives awards to abusive agencies. For example, Best Friends Animal Society gave one of its “awards” to Green River Animal Control, even though it is only one of three pounds nationwide that still gas dogs and cats to death.

The gas chamber at Green River Animal Control, a pound given a Best Friends Animal Society “national award” for “achievements.”

Best Friends has twice honored this particular pound for its “achievements.” After receiving the “award” the first time, the Green River police department, which oversees the facility, said that pound staff care about animals and treat them “fairly,” an unbelievable claim. There is no progressive sheltering agency of any scope or stature willing to embrace gas systems for the killing of animals. When the chamber fills with gas, the animals inside gasp for breath, feel a searing pain in their lungs, and often claw at the chamber door or throw themselves against the sides, desperately trying to escape. It is, in a word, torture. What chance do animal lovers have of shutting down the gas chamber when Green River police can tout their “national award”?

Second, The No Kill Advocacy Center was the only national organization that opposed suspending operations during the pandemic, arguing that spay/neuter clinics and shelters were essential services and should be continued. I wrote several articles, published dozens of social media posts, and reached out to legislators and policymakers nationwide to that effect. 

Specifically, I argued that with creativity, ingenuity, and technology, shelters could rescue animals and find them homes even while taking reasonable precautions to protect against COVID-19 transmission. Indeed, communities that did not close used online applications and meet-and-greets, drive-thru’ fostering, and home delivery with immense success. One shelter had over 2,000 people on a foster waiting list. Another had 1,100 adoption applications pending. From coast to coast,

Thanks to an overwhelming response from people who suddenly found themselves stuck at home, shelters say they have placed record numbers of dogs, cats and other animals.

Many found themselves empty for the first time.

Despite liquor stores being deemed “essential services” in many states, regressive organizations like the National Animal Control Association (NACA) instead championed closure. They called on pound staff to tell finders of lost and abandoned animals to leave them on the sidewalks and streets, including kittens and blind animals. Others, like Dr. Julie Levy, a Maddie’s Fund Shelter Medicine Professor, called for a suspension of sterilization services despite foreseeable repercussions.

To the extent there is any ire at the alleged impact of the closures, the blame should not be directed at The No Kill Advocacy Center or, more generally, the No Kill movement. It should be directed to those, like NACA and Dr. Levy, because of the regressive positions they promoted, which led to abandonment and breeding.

Those threshold matters aside, there is a more considerable misunderstanding at play in the comment. While animals were indeed harmed due to the closures during the pandemic and are harmed in some communities where those policies continue, we are not experiencing unprecedented intakes nationally. Shelter intakes remain below pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, 6.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters. In 2023, that number was down to 6.5 million. In 2024, that number continues to remain below the baseline. Yet, despite lower intakes, dog killing is up 12% from pre-pandemic levels, and cat deaths are up from 2022.

Why are deaths climbing despite lower intakes? 

Shelter directors are listening to groups like Best Friends Animal Society, Austin Pets Alive, and the ASPCA, which have encouraged them to make pandemic-era policies permanent. Not only are some “shelters” refusing to open to the public fully, but many of them are also refusing to re-launch the No Kill Equation programs they scuttled during the pandemic: foster care, marketing and promotion, high-volume sterilization, offsite adoptions, and other robust adoption campaigns, including being open when people are off work and families are together, such as on weekends and evenings. These programs resulted in 95%-99% placement rates — despite higher intake rates and without turning animals away or putting public safety at risk. 

Take New York City, for example. Though it has taken in 8,000 fewer animals than before the pandemic, the city pound is killing more animals. In addition to fewer overall numbers, New York City’s per capita intake rate is only 0.3 dogs and 0.5 cats per 1,000 people, a fraction of the national average. The U.S. average is about ten dogs and cats per 1,000 people — 20 times the New York City rate — and shelters with even higher intake rates maintain 95-99% placement rates. 

Moreover, New York City adoptions would be higher but for the pound’s own practices: reduced days open for adoption, reduced adoption hours, turning away potential adopters without appointments, cumbersome procedures prohibiting families from visiting, requiring multiple visits before adoption, and refusing to return phone calls from people interested in adopting. None of this is being reported by such august publications as The New York Times, which simply parrots the easily disprovable claim that city pounds “are overwhelmed” as people give up pets in “record numbers.”

New York is hardly unique. South of Los Angeles, a Grand Jury investigation into conditions at Orange County Animal Care found that despite lower intakes and operating in a 10-acre site built for $35,000,000 that includes a “two-story, approximately 30,000 square-foot main building, six stand-alone kennel buildings, multiple dog play yards, a barnyard, and a rabbit housing area” — making it “the single largest municipal animal facility in the western United States” — adult cat killing rose dramatically and killing dogs for behavior, including puppies, increased 187%. Why? They refused to fully open up to the public. The kennels were off-limits, and appointments were needed to visit particular animals. In other words, they turned away adopters.

Abandoned cats across the street from the Los Angeles City pound after being turned away by staff. 

To the extent that rescuers feel an increased burden, the available evidence points to “shelter” managers keeping their doors closed and turning animals away. The San Diego Humane Society (SDHS), which runs animal control for the city and a dozen others in the county, is being sued for doing so. And in Los Angeles, cats are abandoned across the street from the pound after being turned away by staff. Rescuers feed the abandoned cats while pound staff do nothing to help them. These organizations are not part of the No Kill movement.

Indeed, SDHS opposed California Assembly Bill 595 (Bowie’s Law), requiring pre-killing notification so that rescuers and members of the public can save animals. It opposed AB 2265 to give rescuers notice of animals facing death at multiple “shelters” without traveling to each one, giving them time to arrange foster care and accept custody of animals before they are killed. And it asked the California Supreme Court to give it the power to kill “adoptable and treatable” dogs — and, by extension, cats — despite rescuers ready, willing, and able to save them.

In short, if there is a crisis, it is a crisis of shelter managers’ own creation.

To combat this, The No Kill Advocacy Center calls on communities to comprehensively implement the programs and services of the No Kill Equation and for legislators to force them to do so by codifying these procedures into law.

If this happens, dogcatchers would become humane officers, pounds would become shelters, and animals would live instead of die. Unfortunately, groups like Best Friends and the ASPCA oppose those efforts, and because of that, killing will continue to increase.

1. The email has been edited for grammar and repetition.