RSPCA NSW’s new truth – pet lovers are no long happy to fund killing

It’s getting ever more difficult for pounds and shelters with high kill rates to defend their operations.

It’s undeniably clear that shelters who have the right leadership, are able to save and place the overwhelming majority of pets, with only a tiny fraction of animals entering a shelter being truly ‘unsaveable’. In addition, most shelters now appreciate that if they were to implement the programs and services of the No Kill equation, the majority of the pets they currently kill, could be saved. However many are just choosing not to.

To camouflage the discrepancy between their public-facing communications (being seen as doing ‘all they can’) and the reality (not actually doing all that much to avoid killing), kill shelters have been forced to conjure a straw man.

Steve Coleman, the CEO of the RSPCA NSW thinks he’s declaring a deep and essential truth about animal sheltering;

“There are just some animals that do not fit in society.

“It would be cruel to keep some animals alive.

“It is our lawful obligation to put those animals down that have a behavioural issue or physical disability.”

Well DUH. Who ever said otherwise?

I’ve been working in animal welfare for more than ten years, attended dozens of animal welfare seminars and spoken to many hundreds of shelter workers and individual rescuers, and I’ve never once heard someone say ‘we should totes leave suffering animals without treatment, and send dogs with behavioural issues without any rehabilitation back out into the community’. They’ve never said this because it is absurd.

Indeed, we as a community have gone to great lengths to ensure pets get care. There are publicly-funded facilities specifically designed to ensure pets are given the treatment they need to stop their suffering and to treat those who have behavioural issues – they’re called ANIMAL SHELTERS. A ‘shelter’ being – by definition – a place offering refuge, protection and sanctuary.

Certainly, if a pet’s treatment fails and the prognosis for recovery is poor, then no one would fault a shelter for ending the life of a suffering animal. However, this last few per-cent of pets can and should be an anomaly in a system which otherwise saves every life. That is No Kill.

Treating pets costs money. The public understand this. Which is why they gift the RSPCA NSW with literally tens of millions every year. (The organisation made $24 million in profit in the past 3 years. They pay $1.3 million per year in executive salaries. They have $50 million in cash and investment assets, including a $35 million share portfolio and $9 million in investment properties).

However, despite these enormous resources, the RSPCA NSW have continued to fail in their mandate to protect pets. Under Coleman’s leadership, they are not just killing irremediably suffering animals or those with untreatable behaviour issues, but more than 40% of their total intakes.

And now, the RSPCA NSW’s failure to evolve and meet the community’s expectations is starting to hit its hip pocket. Says Coleman;

For the first time in my twenty odd years of experience at RSPCA, charities are now really starting to feel the pinch”

Here he is absolutely, 100% correct.

For the first time in twenty years, uninhibited investment by pet lovers is being replaced by a requirement of accountability from major animal charities.

For the first time in twenty years, people are looking critically at the performance of the organisations they support and where those organisations don’t reflect their compassionate values, are redirecting their support elsewhere.

For the first time in twenty years, people are appreciating that their dollar might do more good if they invest in the efforts of local grassroots rescuers, rather than funding mega-organisations who kill as often as they save.

For the first time in twenty years, the more than $100 million dollars pet lovers give to animal charities each year, comes with strings attached. Pet lovers want to fund safe shelters.

If Coleman and his compatriots were really interested in stopping the killing, they would be proudly and fully implementing the No Kill Equation. They would champion the right of every pet to receive the maximum opportunity for treatment and rehabilitation. They’d favour programs which keep pets out of their facilities, rather than drive for laws which increase the powers of Councils to impound pets. And, just to be certain they weren’t missing any avenues for lifesaving, they would have a frank and honest discussion about the nature of their operations and the reasons they kill.

But that’s not what Coleman and other kill shelter operators want. To them, the past looks more attractive than the future.

They want to be able to return to the good-ol-days of ‘twenty years ago’, when they were able to kill freely and without consequence to their donor base. To a time when ‘kill rates’ weren’t critiqued, and sob-stories were all that were required to solicit huge fortunes from pet lovers. And before pet lovers began to compare and contrast their shelters’ performance, with others in the community doing exactly the same job but more effectively.

To this end, they continue to further the myth that shelter pets are unadoptable encouraging pet lovers to not only continue to support them, but actively help defend their high kill rates. ‘Some pets do not fit into society’, sounds better than ‘we kill because local councils pay us to, and we’re too lazy to do anything else’. Or in the case of Coleman and his appalling performance to date, because he would rather stockpile money, than invest it in the treatment and rehabilitation programs which could alleviate the suffering he claims to care so much about.

Being gifted great wealth did not lead to a safe system for pets at the RSPCA NSW. However, the hip pocket pain they are suffering now, is clearly sending a message about community expectation. It’s time for the RSPCA to reject killing as an appropriate tool to use in their shelters. It’s time for them to embrace No Kill.