Berkeley, CA Approaches "No Kill"

The folks over at Bad Rap posted some great (and amazing) numbers from the Berkeley (CA) Animal Shelter.  In 1998, the city of Berkeley put down a staggering 607 dogs and 743 cats.  This is an incredibly high number for any community, but especially one with barely over 100,000 residents.  Over the past 10 years, the community has made some amazing changes in the way they handle adoptions, increased the marketing of the shelters, provided free owner education and training, and increased their voluntary spay/neuter programs.

In 2007, the shelter euthanized 50 dogs and 87 cats -- a 90% decrease in animals killed.  You can see all of their numbers here.

What Berkeley has done is institute many of the programs that Nathan Winograd has been traveling the country talking about with the No Kill movement.  It's these same prinicples that are echoed by the smart people over at the Pet Connection.   It's a similar system to the one instituted in Calgary that has seen almost no dogs or cats euthanized for reasons other than due to extreme health or behavioral issues.

It's a sytem that works.  It's a system that relies on voluntary low-cost spay/neuter programs instead of mandatory ones.  They are systems that rely on enforcing ordinances against owners who are causing problems, not putting out overly-inclusive breed specific ordinances that do nothing to improve public safety and only increase the killing. They are systems that rely on a dedicated effort of strong, smart volunteer groups and gives them the opportunity to get involved.

Let's get behind programs and ordinances that have a proven track record of public safety and actually WORK to decrease the killing that takes place in our shelters. The road-map is there.