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Can We Legislate No Kill?

Legislation is often thought of as a quick solution to high rates
of shelter killing. "If only we had a law," the argument goes, "all
the bad, irresponsible people out there would take care of their
pets properly, and shelters wouldn't have to kill so many animals."

But if this were true, given the proliferation of these laws,
shouldn't there be many No Kill communities by now? In fact,
experience has proven that legislation is far from a cure-all. In
reality, it often has the opposite effect. The communities that
have passed these laws are far from No Kill.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting a different result."

In the late 1970s, national animal welfare agencies, public health
departments, and veterinarian associations held a series of
national symposiums and came up with a national model for
addressing what they called "the surplus pet population." A copy of
their findings and recommendations was sent to 7,000 agencies
nationwide, virtually every shelter in the United States.

Adopting the viewpoint that the public's failure to spay/neuter or
confine their pets was to blame for the high rates of shelter
killing, they focused on efforts to force the public to become
"responsible pet owners." As a result, they recommended a series of
legislative initiatives—most of which were promoted and passed in
localities nationwide. Among the many laws favored, the most common
were those that: required dogs and cats to be confined in homes,
required dogs and to a lesser extent cats to be licensed with local
authorities; limited the number of animals a family could care for;
prohibited the feeding of stray cats; and, provided expanded
authority for animal control officers to seize and destroy pets
they deemed a "nuisance." The theory behind all these laws was to
severely curtail not only the public's "bad" behavior, but also the
bad behavior of the animals.

Unfortunately, the laws had many unintended consequences. Since the
legislation was premised on the assumption that the public was
"bad" and had to be "punished" and "coerced" into doing the right
thing, it ignored the obvious—even if its proponents were right,
the law would nonetheless miss its intended target since
responsible people acted responsibly whether there was a law or
not, while truly irresponsible people would merely ignore the laws.

More importantly, these laws were interpreted to mean that anyone
who fed a stray animal—or left food out for a hungry cat—was
considered the animal's owner. In towns and communities throughout
the United States, well-meaning, compassionate people found
themselves threatened by animal control authorities for feeding the
stray cat who wandered into their backyard in search of food. As
an "owner" under these ordinances, they were violating the law for
"allowing" the cat outside, a curious twist of facts since these
people were not allowing anything, other than allowing the animal
to have occasional food. In the end, however, since failure to
comply often resulted in the pet's impoundment and killing, the net
effect of the legislation was to exacerbate shelter killing.

In fact, many jurisdictions have seen their impound and death rates
increase following passage of such laws which give agencies carte
blanche to round up and kill outdoor animals. If a shelter has high
rates of shelter killing, it makes no sense to support the passing
of laws which give them greater power, and more reasons, to impound—
and subsequently kill—even more animals.

The laws also limited the number of animals a family could own to
often small numbers, three or four in most cases. One of the
effects of this, however, was also to limit the number of animals a
responsible family could help and thus prevented adoptions—and
discouraged the most compassionate people in the community from
coming forward to help the shelter with adoptions, donations, and
volunteer support.

Finally, in order to increase the number of animals sterilized—the
one thing that would have had dramatic results—national shelter
agencies predictably encouraged the passing of even more laws, this
time to force pet owners to spay/neuter at their own expense. Many
localities took up the banner, passing laws that required pet
owners to spay or neuter their dogs and cats on threats of fines,
increased licensing costs, and the impoundment and killing of the pet.

Despite studies showing that simply providing a low-cost
alternative doubled the number of poor people who spayed or
neutered their pets, and that the wealthiest communities
voluntarily spayed/neutered their pets at four times the rate of
their poor counterparts, localities failed to provide meaningful
solutions to obstacles that prevented people from acting the way
shelters wanted them to. While laws were passed to force people to
spay or neuter their pets, little was done about the high cost of
the surgeries charged by many private veterinarians that kept poor
people from complying. Even in the poorest communities where the
federal government was subsidizing the cost of home heating oil to
prevent families from freezing during the winter, in order to
appease veterinarians who continued to oppose perceived threats to
their profits, no effort was made to provide an alternative to a
costly $150 dog spay.

Three Strikes and You're Out
When Fort Wayne, Indiana; San Mateo, California; and King County,
Washington passed their animal control legislation, the laws were
hailed as a "national model." They remain a dismal failure.
Historically, Ft. Wayne's aggressive enforcement of cat licensing
has yielded only single digit compliance and a steadily increasing
death rate for several years following mandatory cat licensing. In
2005, over two decades later, animal control still killed 76% of
all impounded dogs and cats—over three out of four dogs and cats
lost their life.

The unincorporated county of San Mateo adopted its mandatory
licensing programs in the first quarter of 1992 and noted a higher
level of killing than the prior four years. The number of cats
killed for the unincorporated county of San Mateo increased by 54%
following the implementing of cat licensing and 60% in year two.
This represented the first increase in cats being impounded and
killed in San Mateo County. Not surprisingly, in the City of San
Mateo, where the law had not been implemented, the number of cats
handled and killed followed their predictable downward trend of 14%
fewer cats handled and 14% fewer killed.

Following this period, the shelter claimed a decrease in the kill
rate for cats of some 24% just one year later, citing the licensing
law as the reason. But this obscures the fact that it still
represents a 42% increase from the year preceding cat licensing. In
fact, adjusting for the fact that cat licensing did not go into
effect until the end of the first quarter of 1992, the actual
decline was closer to about 5%, significantly lower than the 24%
claimed, and low compared to the decline of 29% experienced in the
City of San Mateo without cat licensing.

But perhaps no legislation has been more heralded, more promoted as
a national model than the one passed in King County, Washington.
Animal control in that community claims that because of the
ordinance, they are now saving the vast majority of "adoptable"
animals. But is this true? In fact, it is not.

First of all, despite being billed as a lost pet's ticket home,
redemption rates have either remained flat or declined since King
County's ordinance went into effect. By real numbers, there is a
decline in redemptions, so the claim made about cat licensing
increasing reclamation rates is not borne out by the data. If
anything, most of these are dogs and even with doubling of dog
licensing, redemptions are still down. In the end, reclaim rates
are consistent with other jurisdictions where these laws are not in
place. In some cases, King County's are even lower.

And despite its mandatory nature, there is no evidence that King
County has higher rates of spay/neuter than jurisdictions who have
made spay/neuter affordable, without diverting animal care dollars
to bureaucratic enforcement.

But what of the claim that because of the ordinance, shelter
killing rates are declining? For the three years prior to
implementation of their ordinance, the county experienced declines
in cat killing of 13%, 9% and 15%, so the trend was definitely in
that direction, and these declines are more significant than the
declines for the six years following enforcement of the law. In
fact, the law may have limited the actual decline—or, in other
words, led to a higher rate of killing than would have otherwise
occurred.

And while killing rates have significantly declined more recently,
the reasons why are not hard to figure out. King County, WA went
from killing all feral cats to working with feral cat TNR groups,
began sterilizing all animals before adoption rather than sending
them out unspayed, began adopting out Pit Bulls rather than having
a policy of 100% killing, began treating cats and kittens with
respiratory infections rather than killing them, started a foster
care program, and began working with rescue groups.

Not surprisingly, declines in impounds and killing perfectly track
changes in programs—making Pit Bulls available for adoption,
treating illnesses, working with TNR groups, and more progressive
policies in adoptions. In short, King County began implementing the
non-punitive, non-legislative programs and services of the No Kill
equation. This is the real reason for the decline in death rates,
and it has nothing to do with its failed legislation.

And no better proof for this proposition exists than Long Beach,
California, which has had a breeding ban for over thirty years. If
legislation is the answer, Long Beach should be a No Kill community
by now. But, in fact, it is far from it, as many homeless animals
have discovered who have had the misfortune of entering their
animal control shelter system. The same is true of Fort Wayne,
Indiana, San Mateo, California, and even King County, Washington.
By contrast, the three most successful communities in the nation
with the highest percentage of animals going home alive only
passively enforce dog laws, and have no cat laws.

Legislation promises a quick fix, a reason to celebrate after
passage. But it isn't so. And denying it by pretending it is a
magic formula to change the life and death calculus for shelter
animals isn't fair to the homeless creatures whose lives often
depend on animal lovers and activists effectively advocating on
their behalf.

The No Kill Advocacy Center
The No Kill Advocacy Center is the nation's first organization
dedicated solely to the promotion of a No Kill nation. And it is
the only national animal welfare agency that is staffed by people
who have actually worked in and created a No Kill community.

But the challenges we face are great. From entrenched bureaucrats
who are content with the status quo, to uncaring shelter directors
hostile to calls for reform; from agencies mired in the failed
philosophies of the past to those who have internalized a culture
of defeatism—the roadblocks to No Kill are substantial, but not
insurmountable.

We have a choice. We can fully, completely and without reservation
embrace No Kill as our future. Or we can continue to legitimize the
two-prong strategy of failure: adopt a few and kill the rest. It is
a choice which history has thrown upon us. And a challenge that the
No Kill Advocacy Center is ready to take on.

Your tax deductible contribution will help us hasten the day when
animals find in their shelter a new beginning—instead of the end of
the line. Working together, we can build an alternative consensus
to traditional sheltering models—one which is oriented toward
promoting and preserving life. An alternative which seeks to create
a future where every animal will be respected and cherished, and
where every individual life will be protected and revered.

No Kill Advocacy Center
P.O. Box 74926
San Clemente, CA 92673
(949) 276-6942
http://www.nokillsolutions.com/

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Sep. 23, 2006