Sometimes blogging is an absolute joy – pulling stats, meaty scientific papers and good-news stories and compiling them all together to make positive change, communicating on a subject you’re passionate about. Other times, it’s purging annoyance because many things have got on your tits all at once and you just have to get it out. That is today.
A bajillion dollars in the bank which could have been used to promote it, and the RSPCA NSW’s ‘Rescue Me’ adoption day = 31 adoptions.
For fuckity fucks sake.
Oh, but hangon, it wasn’t a complete wash…
“Over both days, we are happy to report that we raised $100,726.65!*”
*for RSPCA NSW coffers.
Meanwhile, the RSPCA NSW’s financials for 2013/2014 are out, and it’s been yet another cracker year. More than $5 million profit, with its cash and investment portfolio now climbing to $53 million. RSPCA NSW executive pay has jumped by 17.5%, to $1.5 million.
But probably most importantly, despite claiming in the media that donations were down – so down in fact that the RSPCA NSW needed to close shelters lest they go broke – donations and legacies are up from $11 million to $20 million for last year.
The full financials can be viewed here.
Even if the claims about a downturn in revenue were true, let’s look at the RSPCA NSW operating costs for a moment. Operating costs for the 2013/14 year came to $48 million dollars. There are about 1.6 million households in NSW, meaning the organsation is getting – and spending – about $30 from every family in the state. Each year.
This is an absolutely MASSIVE sum by any measure. Supporters need to be asking themselves – do we feel we’re getting $30 a year worth of value from this organisation, when a highly-anticipated adoption event can only place 30 dogs in homes?
As none of our major cat welfare groups are willing to stand up and lobby for a cat’s right (owned, stray, community or feral) to live free from harassment or harm, we now have the government agencies responsible for ‘pest’ control dictating the policy for cat management.
The lives of your pets are now being directed by agencies who want them all dead, and who aren’t afraid to invest millions in creative ways to kill them.
This is a $100-million-dollar-a-year animal welfare industry failing of a spectacular scale. They are not doing what we pay them to do – protect our animals. And I would say this is the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced as pet owners, as laws get more and more draconian, and the very right to have pets is eroded. They’ve sided with the enemy, and now our pets are in the firing line…
Invasive Animal CRC’s twitter alert
Wyndham had a cat curfew for ten years and exactly ZERO human people were punished under the legislation in that decade.
However, it drove the cat impound numbers sky high, with over 1,200 impounds to The Lost Dogs Home each year. Most of these cats were killed.
At $80 – $100 per cat impounded (a modest processing fee) Wyndham residents would have a bill with the Lost Dogs Home of about $120,000pa. Or more than half a million bucks over five years. For what?
A few thousand dead cats.
Not convinced that this is a stupid waste of money by ten years of non-results, Wyndham took the opportunity to reenstate the cat curfew when it expired. Again, the city isn’t investing in positive change for cats, but simply a haul-em-in-and-kill-em process, provided by the LDH…
“… the curfew would be enforced by affected residents trapping cats if they were at large during the curfew times.”
Empowered cat haters doing the council’s dirty work. Supported by an immoral, charity pet-abattoir happy to kill for cash.
What an appalling misuse of the community’s pet management resources.
The “Lost Dog’s Home” sounds like the most horrible place for animals anywhere in Australia. What chance do they have to survive?