A year in NSW pounds #3 – Who are the real leaders of animal welfare?

‘Open Admission’ pounds achieving amazing things in NSW
(kill rates as a percentage)
Cooma-Monaro – 0% for dogs, 0% for cats
Manly Council – 2% for dogs, 0% for cats
Mosman (Cremorne Veterinary Hospital) – 2% for dogs, 0% for cats
North Sydney (North Shore Vet Hopital) – 0% for dogs, 0% for cats
Sutherland – 2% for dogs, 10% for cats
Bombala – 0% for dogs, nil cat intakes
Palerang (Queanbeyan Pound) – 4% for dogs, nil cat intakes

Zero of these are RSPCA NSW shelters. None. Zip. Nada. While the RSPCA NSW claim that they are doing ‘all they can’ to save lives and that there was no other available option for the pets they killed over the year – these small community-centric pounds are showing them that the killing is not only NOT necessary, but that in practice it can be eliminated. These proactive pounds have halted their killing today. Not in some mythical future where there are different animal welfare laws, or people are more responsible, or more pets are desexed, or less pets are entering the pound system. Today.

And these are just the pounds in NSW. There are pounds in every other state that are rejecting killing at an appropriate response to lost, unwanted and stray animals, and are instead working to find other solutions.

To continue the fiction that ‘open admission’ pounds can’t save all healthy, treatable pets – and that pounds who boast euthanasia rates of less than 10% (the basic cutoff to No Kill reporting) don’t exist, is blantantly deceptive. What’s more, what we can see here is that with community support, those rates can be driven down to 3%, 2% or even 0% – a compassionate and humane outcome which sees all healthy treatable pets given a second chance. Anyone with any kind of compassion would want to see all pound pets be given the same opportunities.

Given the RSPCA’s seeming inabilty to embrace a culture of lifesaving, no longer should we consider the RSPCA the leaders in animal welfare. The number of pounds who’ve moved beyond killing grows every day. Often thanks to pressure applied externally by the community. Find out the performance of your local council and, if they are still killing healthy, treatable pets, demand they implement the No Kill Equation. We are the future of humane animal sheltering.

No more excuses – no more killing.