news: pauvre chaton

Strays, shelters feeling delayed bite of recession
Updated 11/5/2010 12:09 AM

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
More private animal shelters are not accepting strays as they fill up with animals abandoned because their owners cannot afford to keep them.
No one tracks how many shelters do not take strays, but "we are seeing more of it, especially with the economy," says Pam Burney, vice president for community initiatives with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "Non-profit shelters are looking at the resources they have available."

The shelters are reaching capacity because more people who are losing jobs or homes are abandoning their cats and dogs, Burney says. Animals are dropped off by the owners or picked up on the street by the public or animal control officers.

PAW PRINT POST: A community for animal lovers
Some shelters, overrun with animals, are choosing not to accept strays because they want to euthanize fewer animals, says Inga Fricke, director of sheltering initiatives at the Humane Society of the United States.

Shelters are ending their contracts with municipalities to get stray animals off the streets. That has put pressure on cities, also feeling budget constraints, to find other places for the animals, says Debbie Dawson, senior animal control officer in Edmonds, Wash., who is president of the National Animal Control Association.

She says it is especially difficult for smaller towns that may have only one shelter. Some are turning animals over to private kennels or veterinarians to house or put down animals.

Shelter officials say municipalities do not pay the full cost of housing a stray animal.

Sandy Ankrom, manager of the Highland Animal Shelter in Highland, Ill., a rural community east of St. Louis, says her shelter ended its contract with the city in July because it could no longer afford to care for animals the city brought in.

"We asked the city for more money, but they said they couldn't afford it," Ankrom says. The city paid the shelter about $21,000 a year to take in strays, but she says $18,000 of that was spent just on veterinary bills.

Among other shelters that have made changes:

•The Delaware County SPCA in Media, Pa., will end in July its contracts with 46 municipalities to take strays found in their communities. By 2012, the shelter plans to become a no-kill facility, meaning it will euthanize only dangerous animals or those too sick or injured to survive.

•The Humane Society of North Central Arkansas ended its contract with the city of Mountain Home on Monday. The Humane Society got $1,500 a month to care for strays, but board President Barbara Chambers says the number of strays kept increasing. In October, the number of strays arriving had more than doubled to more than 50.

•Since October, the Louisiana SPCA will go out to get strays only if they are injured or have attacked someone, says CEO Ana Zorrilla. The shelter handles animal code enforcement for New Orleans. She says the city cut its budget from $2.3 million to $2.1 million and proposes to cut it to $1.5 million next year.

The result, she says, is that more dogs and cats are roaming the streets.

"There is no other agency to take care of these animals," she says. "So they will suffer."


http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/pets/2010-11-05-strayanimals05_ST_N.htm