Back in September, I was able to secure through Right to Information, statistics surrounding the Lost Dogs Home’s management of Brisbane City Council’s two animal pounds (Warra + Willawong).
At the time Brisbane City Council described media reports featuring those stats (obtained from their own council!), as “grossly inaccurate” and “misleading”. However, despite Council using nearly $4 million dollars of local rate payer’s funds to pay the Lost Dogs Home to manage the community’s dogs and cats, Council was unable or unwilling to provide the community any of their own figures. Instead saying figures would be released in the Lost Dogs Home Annual Report “sometime in November”.
Council has continued to defend the quality of service being provided by the LDH.
Brisbane Council spokesman Troy Bilsborough said the council investigated claims of higher euthanasia rates last year following a complaint from a former staff member and determined the shelter had “no case to answer”.
Sending anyone who contacted Council with concerns, a letter from Graham Quirk, Lord Mayor, stating:
… I wish to advise that, in 2010, Council sought to engage an animal welfare organisation with the primary aim of improving rehoming rates and the overall welfare of animals brought to its two shelters. Council is satisfied that, since the Lost Dogs Home LDH took control in 2011, no suitable healthy animal has been euthanised.
I’m also informed that at least 90% of these suitably healthy cats and dogs have been rehomed to date.
….
I can confirm that Council is satisfied with the performance of the LDH to date.
And so, as a collective we’ve been forced to wait the last two months to be given the ‘official’ animal outcome statistics for July 2012 – June 2013… a full six months after the end of the financial year.
But obscuration aside, just how many of the pets of Brisbane are being saved? Now we know.
Dogs
2,512 – Returned to owner
342 – Adopted
743 – Killed
Cats
138 – Returned to owner
291 – Adopted
1,151 – Killed
Remember when you look at these figures, that Council have stated that both “no suitable healthy animal” had been killed, and that they were “satisfied” with the levels of killing at the shelter. They even implied a rehoming rate of “90%”.
But now we can see, two dogs were killed for every one dog adopted, according to the Lost Dogs Home figures.
Cats was an indisputable bloodbath, with more than 1,000 cats killed in a single year.
Also remember, that the Lost Dogs Home is being paid just shy of $1 million dollars a year by Council to provide care to the approximately 5,000 animal intakes – meaning each animal is being charged to council at around $200 per animal.
Lost animals who are reclaimed also generate revenue for the LDH through impound/reclaim and sustenance fees.
In short, there is plenty of cash – an undeniable fortune – being spent in Brisbane on providing a sheltering system for the community’s pets. Unfortunately, there is also an insurmountable lack of will from the Lost Dogs Home, to save the lives of those same animals.
There is no rational defence in 2013 for a shelter who chooses to kill pets many, many times more often they choose to find those pets new homes.
Brisbane City Council might be happy with the current system of investing enormous amounts of the community’s money into supporting a boutique pet slaughterhouse, but I would suggest that most pet-lovers would feel differently.
Delaying the June figures until the media hoo-ha died down may have been an effective strategy to stifle discussion when this issue was front page news, but the sad truth is animals are still being killed unnecessarily, and the Lost Dogs Home is still making enormous profits while making it nearly impossible for the community to appraise their performance in a timely way.
Brisbane locals need to demand that a more compassionate organisation take the reigns – or that Council again resume running the pound themselves, with the oversight and support of local rescue groups – so that pets are protected. They need to run the Blight of Melbourne out of town… just as Melbourne itself did.
See also: The last defence of the indefensible – obscuration
Not giving a chance for rehoming and saying that no healthy suitable animal is killed…dispicable and inhumane. Shame on you all.
If more of the general public knew about this there would be a massive level of outrage. There is no way that the public could possibly wish for their money, taken from them in taxes, to be spent funding the Lost Dog’s Home and their shady practices.
The RSPCA and AWL are massively underfunded, as are many other welfare organisations with charity status. They receive no government support. Wouldn’t it be a much better alternative towards supporting animal welfare to use our tax money to flush funds into these more reputable organisations, which are not-for-profit instead??
It is interesting that LDH have a long term CEO and Chairman (who is also vice President of RSPCA QLD) so maybe it is time for change at the top.
Sadly having a CEO who is also affiliated with the RSPCA who are known to have the highest kill rate gives little hope for all healthy dogs as they deem most bully types to be unsuitable..wrong. All dogs deserve a chance not just the ones you deem suitable, if you have to work with them because they have had a bad start to life, then that should done, not just kill them because you deem it too hard. Senseless waste of life and its a crime.
It is disgusting that this has happened. The Brisbane Council has provided false information to the public, and with that amount of money there should be absolutely NO deaths of animals, dogs or cats!!!