Orange County Register

(See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

Did the grand jury get it wrong?

Even though the county

• euthanized more than 13,000 animals in one year (at a cost of $322,478)
• and sent the remains of some 23,000 to the rendering vats (at a cost of about $49,000)-

a mandatory spay/neuter law is not necessarily the answer to saving money and lives, according to the experience of New Hampshire and James Gardner of the South County Animal Shelter Coalition.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: The Live-Free-Or-Die state’s voluntary spay/neuter program (the grand jury had a factual hiccup, calling it a mandatory program) reduced the number of animals killed by more than 80 percent. Its success can be tied to cheap-cheap surgeries (as low as $25), big buy-in from veterinarians and a laser-like focus on low-income households. It’s paid for with a surcharge on dog licenses. Read more about the program here.

SOUTH COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER COALITION: This bunch of firebrands is trying to convince southern cities to break free from the county system and start a shelter of their own. Members are highly critical of the Orange County Animal Shelter, and The Watchdog fully expected them to be popping champagne corks when the grand jury report recommending mandatory spay/neuter came out. Luckily, The Watchdog loves surprises.

“The answer to mandatory spay and neuter at this time is no,” Gardner wrote in a critique of the grand jury report, presented to the Board of Supervisors last month. “The County should institute less restrictive programs before considering mandatory programs.”

What OC needs now is to:

• Create multiple shelters closer to the people

• Renovate the Orange shelter; don’t close it

• Make building a shelter at the old Tustin base a priority, but build it to handle far fewer animals

• Start developing modular shelters in multiple locations throughout the county

• Work with cities to encourage them to develop city based shelters (like Irvine, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, etc.)

• Emphasize preventive programs

• Start voluntary subsidized spay and neuter programs at the local level

• Start low cost and/or free spay and neuter programs for the low income, disabled, and senior citizens

• Start trap-neuter-release programs at the local level working with city based rescue and volunteer groups.

Now, The Watchdog knows that some folks at the county roll their eyes over Gardner’s reports, but we find them interesting, and put forward a portion of his latest treatise for your consideration:

Gardner compared OC to San Diego and Los Angeles city shelter systems - other “open shelters” that must accept all comers (many low-kill and no-kill shelters turn animals away - and those animals wind up at open shelters like OC, SD and LA, which must take them. That hikes up the open shelters’ kill rates, while reducing the closed centers’ kill rates).

So Gardner offers this chart showing that OC’s not doing as well reducing kill rates:

and another chart (which we can’t seem to copy here) showing that admissions to the shelters in Los Angeles and San Diego have been decreasing some 3 to 4 percent per year, while Orange County’s admissions increased slightly. Gardner writes:

“Not only are SD and LA lower in euthanasia rate, higher in decreasing the rate of euthanasia, they are reducing their rate of admissions at a level significantly greater than OC. Why? All three are open shelters. All three are publicly operated. All three serve more than two million people. All three admit more than 25,000 animals a year and can be classified as large systems. Why the differences?

“We can point to three ways in which these systems differ.

1.  Although the systems handle approximately the same number of animals, SD and LA have multiple shelters while OC has a single shelter. The result is that the average shelter in SD and LA handles a population of 500,000 while the lone OC shelter handles a population of more than 2,000,000.

2. Because they have multiple shelters, the average distance from a city served by a shelter in LA is about 5 miles, in SD it is about 10 miles, and in OC it is more than 12 miles. From a population base, more than 90% of the people served by LA and SD are within 5 miles of their local shelter while less than 50% of the people served by the lone OC shelter are within 5 miles of their shelter.

3. LA and SD have strong preventive programs, including spay and neuter and TNR (trap, neuter, and release)  for feral cats.

“In summary, although it’s true that in general open shelters have higher euthanasia rates than closed shelters, being an open shelter is not the main determinant of euthanasia rate. The other determinants include admission rate (bigger is worse), size of shelter (bigger is worse), availability of local shelters (closer is better), and the presence of preventive programs (more is better).

“Comparing OC with SD and LA, we can examine the impact on the animals and on the financing of animal services. If OC functioned at the same level as SD/LA, in 2007 alone we would have…

• spent $400,000 less on euthanizing animals. 

• spent $2,000,000 less on animal care. 

• killed 3,069 fewer animals

• admitted 5,000 fewer animals

“Cumulatively, since 2001, we would have saved more than $6,000,000 and 17,000 fewer animals would have gone through the OC Shelter.”

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