In September of this year, a fire at a pet boarding facility north of Austin tragically took the lives of 75 dogs in the middle of the night.
Just days earlier, an overnight fire took nearly two dozen feline lives at a shelter in Florida. As much as we wish they were, these are not isolated cases. From natural causes like lightning and heat waves to accidents like electrical shorts, the causes of fire are innumerable.
At Austin Pets Alive!, we are ever vigilant and hyper-aware of the devastating effects of fire. We know that the number one way to prevent these catastrophic events is proper sprinkler systems and alarms. We have installed alarms that alert leadership upon activation, and cameras that enable us to view our facilities remotely, but we are not able to install an automatic sprinkler system due to the low water pressure available for us.
The next best thing is for us to have someone onsite 24/7 to monitor for any warning signs of fire and act immediately so that we don’t lose time moving animals to safety. The Humane Society of the United States agrees, recommending that “the shelter is left unmanned as little as possible.”
This is where we need YOU! We are in need of adding staff willing to work overnight 3-4 days a week. Ideally, we would love to have someone onsite who can assist with basic medical care as well. We are willing to train you! Apply to join our lifesaving operations and help protect APA! animals overnight by clicking here or emailing [email protected].
This is the week! Austin City Council will vote Thursday on the future of Austin Pets Alive! at Town Lake Animal Center.
The animals depend on the support of the greater Austin animal-loving community and we are asking if you will take one more quick action to confirm your support for our resolution, agenda item #38.
We want this resolution to pass, as it clearly removes the restriction that would prevent us from saving the lives of those on death row all over our state. This is important because we have long demonstrated that we can save lives in need while also maintaining that Austin’s No Kill status is first and foremost.
We are grateful the resolution also directs City animal services staff to negotiate with APA! regarding the percentage of animals we are responsible for pulling from the city shelter and clearly indicates those animals should be based on those at risk of euthanasia. This has always been the intent of our partnership with the City and we are eager to ensure our contract reflects that.
Check the first box for the regular Austin City Council meeting,
Select item #38 from the drop-down menu,
Click “no” that you do not wish to speak,
Click “For” for your position,
Fill out your identification information and in the box for the topic, please type, “Vote Yes on Item #38.”
That’s it! Your voice will then be counted in support of Thursday’s meeting!
Just as you help us every day by fostering, adopting, volunteering, and donating to find homes for animals, we really need you to act now so APA! can land safely and continue our important work with as few interruptions as possible.
We are incredibly grateful to Council Member Leslie Pool for her leadership on this resolution and to Mayor Adler, Council Member Kitchen, Council Member Fuentes, and Council Member Casar for co-sponsoring. Please join us in thanking them for their support for APA! and No Kill. We know the Council offices are keeping track of people who email/call in favor of agenda item #38, so it is very important that you fill out that form before noon on Wednesday!
Thank you for being here for the animals, all the animals, and ensuring that APA! continues to keep Austin No Kill.
Thank you for sticking with us as we navigate our way through this journey towards APA!’s forever home.
Just as you help us every day by fostering, adopting, volunteering, and donating to find homes for animals, we really need you to act now so APA! can land safely and continue our important work with as few interruptions as possible.
We have received word that our item DID make it on the agenda for the November 4th city council meeting and we are officially item #38. The resolution is very good overall as it clearly removes the restriction that would prevent us from saving the lives of those on death row all over our state while also maintaining that Austin’s No Kill status is first and foremost. As you may recall, this is important because there are no other city contracts (that we are aware of) that limit the mission and scope of a nonprofit that provides a distinct service to the city. It’s also important because our mission is to eliminate the killing of shelter animals and we can’t do that if our work is artificially restricted.
We are grateful the resolution also directs staff to negotiate with APA! regarding the percentage of animals we are responsible for pulling from the city shelter and clearly indicates those animals should be based on those at risk of euthanasia. This has always been the intent of our partnership with the City and we are eager to ensure our contract reflects that.
We are committed to working with the city, and each of you, into the future to ensure there are checks and balances in place to institutionalize live outcomes and progress for decades to come. Given the fact that AAC has the nation’s largest animal services budget per capita, it is truly time to establish best practices and hold ourselves to a higher standard; a standard expected by our tax-payers. We know that a fair and equitable agreement between APA and the City of Austin is the first step towards achieving this goal and making No Kill a priority in our city.
We are incredibly grateful to the co-sponsors for their leadership: Mayor Adler, Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen, Greg Casar and Vanessa Fuentes. We recognize how much work has gone into resolving this important issue and we are grateful they have worked so hard to ensure it is placed on the agenda.
What we need now is for you to THANK these co-sponsors and ask your council member to vote yes on agenda item #38 between now and the vote on November 4th.
Thank you for being here for the animals, all the animals, and ensuring that APA! continues to keep Austin No Kill.
There is one day left before we know whether the city council has taken action on our APA! Resolution by adding it to the next city council meeting agenda.
What keeps rising to the top of criticism of our resolution from council offices is that they don’t understand why Austin Pets Alive! should be allowed to help communities outside of the greater Austin metro area. They see and hear about animals having long lengths of stay at Austin Animal Center(AAC) and the kennels being overcrowded there. Some believe that Austin Pets Alive!’s primary function, in addition to keeping Austin a No Kill City, should be to relieve the pressure at Austin Animal Center for the city staff. Some also believe that Austin Pets Alive!’s practice of helping animals outside of Austin is actually causing the overcrowding at Austin Animal Center.
The problem with this line of thinking is that “relieving pressure” is not something the City of Austin compensates APA! to do nor is it in line with our mission. APA! has used the Town Lake Animal Center for the last 10 years to keep Austin No Kill by pulling animals from Austin Animal Center who will die if we don’t. The city council has awarded Austin Animal Center with enough funding to relieve their own pressure.
So then why is Austin Animal Center constantly crowded?
It’s because Austin city leadership has given little credence to research and data that clearly shows that Austin has, and has always had, more than enough adopters to take in every single animal at Austin Animal Center AND to adopt every single animal that gets help from APA!, Austin Humane Society and the hundreds of rescue groups who take in animals from across the state.
We believe that the reason that credence is not given is that it is much easier to say “there are not enough adopters,” which implies that increasing adoptions is outside the control of the shelter director and reinforces poor performance.
We believe it is incumbent on us as shelter professionals, and we include Austin Animal Center leadership in that, to look at data when making any decision. We thought, but now realize we might be wrong, that the city manager and the city council also used data to drive decisions. If AAC leadership, and city council members, did that, they would be able to say “I see a problem with too many animals living at AAC at one time” and then connect that to the thought of “what can I do to make this better”. We have said it before but it’s worth repeating: adoptions don’t just happen. They are the result of resources, time, and strategic planning to ensure that the animals housed at AAC are getting opportunities to meet people and to be seen.
To put it in perspective, over the last five years, the city has increased Austin Animal Center’s budget by $1M per year. Tellingly, every single category of programming has benefited from that increased funding EXCEPT “Pet Placement/ Pet Outcomes” which actually fell by 30% in budgeted monies. Why isn’t anyone in leadership, at any level, examining and correcting that instead of strongarming APA! into making up for it?
Austin Pets Alive! has never been interested in being the City of Austin’s “overflow” for a system that lacks oversight, lacks critical thinking, and continues to make poor decisions and we are standing by our mission to save lives.
As individual citizens and as a private nonprofit, we have asked and asked for the government animal shelter to be run well because it is critically important to Austin’s animals and to APA!. That has not worked. We hope this final attempt to wake up our city council will work and we, in partnership with the City of Austin, can finally focus on forward momentum. To keep the support strong through this final day of city council consideration, please keep emailing to express your support for the APA! resolution.
Even if you already have sent an email, we need to keep the message top of mind. Thank you!
This week, we are going back through time to showcase the history of No Kill in Austin and our public-private partnership with the City of Austin.
1998-2001: From the beginning when local attorney Jim Collins created Austin Pets Alive!, it’s mission has been to promote and provide the resources, education and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals in shelters. In order to meet that mission, APA! started as an advocacy organization dedicated to making program and policy changes at the city’s shelter. At this time, the city was euthanizing 85% of the 35,000 animals that entered the shelter on an annual basis. The goal was to make Austin a No Kill City by the year 2000. During this time, the founders coordinated an effective public awareness campaign which led to a doubling of the city shelter’s budget. Additionally, the kill rate was substantially reduced, daily open-adoption hours were introduced, and a volunteer program was created. Despite all of this, No Kill was not reached during this time.
Jim Collins created Austin Pets Alive! article, 1998
2008-2011: Still in line with the mission and reinvigorated with new leadership, APA! shifted its strategy to focus on more direct ways to impact the City of Austin shelter’s euthanasia rate, which by 2007 was at 55% with 25,000 animals entering the shelter on an annual basis. We were still an all volunteer organization with less than $10,000 in the bank and no facility, but that didn’t stop us from thinking big. In 2008, we pulled together as many like-minded people as we possibly could and carved out a business plan that would build the infrastructure to address the needs of the up to 14,000 animals who were dying each year at the city shelter.
2009
One of the first steps in this new strategy was to intervene in the euthanasia process. As is true today, animals came into the city shelter from many different places for various reasons. After pets were taken in, animals surrendered by their owners moved immediately either to the adoption portion of the shelter, to a rescue group (non APA!), or to a euthanasia list. Stray pets were held for three days before the decision was made to euthanize them or attempt to adopt or transfer them to rescue. Long term Austinites might remember when the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) shelter was segregated between animals lucky enough to have survived the last 3 days on the left and those who were too big, dark, scarred, sickly or badly behaved and destined to die on the right behind a locked gate. The public was not allowed to even look at the 75% of campus that was the non-adoption side.
2009
Each day, our team received a list of animals, ranging from 20-100 animals long, that were slated for euthanasia. We were given two hours to try to move those animals to safety by 7 p.m. or they would be dead by 11:30 a.m. the next day.
In those two hours, day after day, 365 days a year, our tough-as-nails volunteer team worked at lightning speed. They posted on Facebook and Craigslist, imploring the community to help by fostering for a short period of time. They texted people they knew that liked labs or poodles to try to find a spare bathroom anywhere to house a pet, who might loosely resemble that breed, until they could make it to an adoption event. Every day, they made an impact on that euthanasia list and cut it down by 10% or as much as 100%. Every week, we could add up each day’s progress to figure out the impact we were making. This eventually translated into a yearly impact metric.
As APA!’s strategy was to intervene in the deaths of the animals at the very last minute, the byproduct was the huge increase in public awareness that these very adoptable animals were dying. The awareness led to public outcry and city council action (very similar to what happened in 1999). That turned out to be an incredibly important part of the puzzle, impacting the euthanasia rate beyond even our direct euthanasia list intervention, and led to Austin becoming No Kill.
By the time our original license agreement to operate TLAC came around in 2011, the community had advocated heavily for change at the city of Austin shelter. The city council passed a 2010 No Kill Implementation Plan, recommended to them by the Austin Animal Advisory Commission after an intense year of public input and strategy sessions. That plan included, most importantly:
a mandate for the city shelter to reach a 90% live release rate
a moratorium on killing while any cages were empty (previously this practice left 50 or more kennels open each morning for “possible” intakes)
a directive for the city shelter to grow a foster program and behavior program
a directive to use Town Lake Animal Center (about to be vacated for the new location in East Austin) as an adoption center
an extra $1,000,000 to add to the city shelter budget to help implement these goals
2010
When the city shelter moved from TLAC to east Austin, we had to work tirelessly to gain the ability to use the old shelter. Council Members Martinez and Morrison worked with all parties involved to outline the requirements of that first agreement. Ultimately, APA! agreed to continue taking 3,000 animals from the euthanasia list at the city shelter annually, when the city’s intake was 19,000, the city’s budget was 7 million dollars and they were still euthanizing 2,000 of the pets, even with us pulling 3,000 to safety. The city of Austin and APA! still had a lot of lifesaving work to do to get Austin to No Kill.
March 11, 2010
2011-2019: A lot has changed in the world of animal sheltering and certainly in the City of Austin during the last decade. The city shelter gained an additional 10 million dollars in their budget and today has a budget of 17 million dollars for an average intake of 18,000. Many of those millions were injected into the city shelter’s medical program despite the fact that APA! had been, since 2011, pulling nearly 100% of the medically challenged animals. Even after millions of tax payer dollars went into medical care for city owned animals at Austin Animal Center (AAC), there were still 1,500+ animals with medical needs listed for euthanasia, down from 3,000+, because the medical practices that AAC employed were more like private practice in their expense and less like the triage APA! used to save lives at a low cost.
In fact, at that stage the animals that were still dying (meaning APA! didn’t have capacity to save them after they were listed on euthanasia list) were almost entirely large breed dogs with and without behavioral challenges. However, almost none of the new AAC funding was directed to help increase fostering or adoptions of those dogs. And almost none of the funding was directed to help pet owners keep their big dogs to prevent intake. There was a brief period of AAC leadership, Tawny Hammond, Lee Ann Shenefiel and Kristen Auerbach, that tried to put more resources into large dogs but they were met with resistance. Because of overall inadequate oversight of the very generous new funding directed by council to “make Austin No Kill”, there continued, and continues, to be a euthanasia list with large breed dogs and medical animals, and there continues to be struggles with large breed dog capacity at AAC. APA! continued to take the “leftover” animals who were listed for euthanasia even though no government funding came to APA! for the care of pets from the city shelter. As AAC management tried to overcome overcrowding, they leaned on APA! to take more and more non-euthanasia list large breed dogs.
2012
Even with all of these partnership issues, APA! started a behavior program directed at saving the dogs with challenging histories of trauma to prevent their euthanasia at AAC unless there was a severe, demonstrated public safety risk. As per our mission, we didn’t focus on trying to relieve space issues for AAC but of course tried to help.
2014
When AAC reached a 95% live release rate, and due to the continual turnover of leadership at AAC which left AAC vulnerable to moving backwards to killing, we focused on building institutional sustainability for No Kill in Austin. No Kill is still very much dependent on the city animal services director’s personal philosophy because there is very little throughout city government to institutionalize it.
Thanks to the ongoing work of Council Member Leslie Pool’s office, a new citywide ordinance to preserve a 95% minimum live release rate and an updated animal code went into effect. In addition, we documented memorandums of understanding (MOU)s to preserve internal practices between AAC and APA! that we hoped would cement No Kill practices in Austin. Austin’s No Kill status was further buoyed by the 2017 Economic Impact Study showing No Kill policy had brought $157M into Austin.
2019-2021: Since 2019, the city has maintained a continual live release rate at or above 95%, in accordance with the ordinance. With the largest budget, per capita and per animal, of any government animal shelter in the nation, AAC has received the financial support to achieve this level of lifesaving. Unfortunately, despite all of this progress, policy changes, and historically high budget, the city has shifted its expectation of maintaining capacity for non-euthanasia list animals to achieve No Kill to APA! with no oversight of existing taxpayer fund usage or financial investment in APA!. This is far outside the scope of the original licensing agreement, signed at a time when 2,000+ animals were still dying and the city’s budget was extremely inadequate for lifesaving. We are proud of our role in making Austin No Kill and advocating for appropriate AAC funding but we have no control or oversight of those funds as a completely private entity. Our fear of losing the use of TLAC has exacerbated that inability to advocate for change in the past.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020, every shelter in the country emptied their shelters, placing the vast majority of pets in foster homes. This gave the animal welfare industry time to think about the purpose and functions of animal shelters to begin with. APA! pivoted, once again, to focus on keeping human animal families together and launched the Human Animal Support Services (HASS) project. We started HASS because we believe that building the infrastructure to serve community pets and people could dramatically lower the number of pets needing to be institutionalized in the shelter. As APA! and our national arm, American Pets Alive!, worked to implement HASS in most major U.S. cities, we were met within our own city of Austin with some interest but no action to undertake truly solving for why so many animals enter Austin Animal Center every year.
Instead, we, at APA!, have been made painfully aware through multiple crises (the 2021 cold crisis when the city shelter shut down and deferred the public to APA! for help or during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when the city shelter just stopped all support to community members who needed much more than a website to navigate options during the human crises they faced), that the city expects the public private partnership to continue, for the next 75 years, as simple, quiet overflow for all of the Austin Animal Center problems.
At the same time, the Austin Animal Center is under a high level of scrutiny by the Austin Animal Advisory Commission due to a memo sent by the Austin Animal Center director, claiming that killing of dogs with behavioral histories would need to begin in order to keep capacity at a manageable level, despite a historically low intake of animals. This is unacceptable and we hope the city will use the recommendations from the commission to make lasting change in how the center is managed.
Summer 2021: As of today, the world is rapidly evolving and other cities are passing Austin by as the most progressive for animal welfare. Disheartened by the city’s lack of interest in progressing beyond a No Kill number to build a truly humane community and compounded by the state, and now accepted future, of our facility, we have made the difficult decision to refuse to be the “overflow” for Austin Animal Center any longer or do the rest of the Austin Animal Center’s job for free. We need to go back to a relationship that preserves lifesaving but also drives progress and innovation. Tragically, we are forced to potentially vacate TLAC to gain this but in doing so, we hope Austin will regain its “top” status.
Today: We have let the city know that while we are committed to keeping Austin a No Kill City by taking in animals truly at risk of euthanasia, if there is to be any formal documented agreement with APA! to preserve No Kill status, we will not agree to serve as an overflow facility to animals who are not at risk of euthanasia. And we will not agree to limit the scope of our important and lifesaving work to make the entirety of Texas – and nation – No Kill. It’s still our hope, though now somewhat distant, to have an agreement with the city that allows TLAC to continue as a beacon of hope in this new phase of Austin’s animal history. It is clear that will only happen if the city council directs staff to make it happen.
Soon, we will need your help to advocate for these changes to our contract and to the overall No Kill sustainability plan for Austin. We can’t do this without our supporters now, just as we couldn’t have created this organization without you from the start. I hope this information helps you to understand why so much is happening at once regarding Austin’s No Kill status and why there are no simple decisions for everyone involved.
Thank you,
Ellen Jefferson, DVM President and CEO Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!
As the second installment in a short series of letters meant to inform you of APA!’s relationship with the City of Austin, we wanted to bring you up to speed on the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) property and how it impacts the renegotiation of our license agreement to operate APA!.
Built in the 1950s, the TLAC facility was a huge improvement over what existed before, which was a structure somewhere in Austin that held all the animals in a massive concrete pen without adequate food and water until they were all shot, in front of an audience, when their time was up. The beginning of sheltering in Austin, as in the entire United States, was rooted in the fear of a nationwide pandemic of Rabies.
Austin American Statesman, 1951Austin American Statesman, 1956, laying the pad for the original Ringworm facility and the original Building C
As such, from 1950 all the way until 2008, the intention of housing the animals was never to save them all or any percent close to that. The original purpose of this facility, in fact, was to continue ridding Austin of dogs and cats who didn’t have owners with the means to reclaim them. TLAC and the structures that still stand today serve as an important reminder for all of us of a past that we never want to go back to.
Austin American Statesman, 1977, when TLAC was occupied by the Humane Society
In 2007, the city made the decision to vacate TLAC and embarked on hiring an architect to build a new shelter in East Austin. There was a lot of controversy over the planned move because it would involve removing lost and homeless animals from downtown Austin. The concerns were threefold:
A lack of visibility would lead to more deaths (now substantiated by the commercial market). Then mayor, Lee Leffingwell, compromised, promising the citizens of Austin there would always be an adoption center at TLAC, even after the move.
The new shelter had fewer kennels than TLAC. Staff asserted that more animals could be co-housed at the new shelter so it actually served the same number of pets. Unfortunately, at the time, almost all big dogs were being killed so co-housing was only intended for little dogs.
The addition at the new site of a huge incinerator so the pets who were killed would no longer have to be sent to the city dump in large truck fulls. Luckily, this was struck from the final plans because it was a big expense for a practice that was going to stop.
In the end, the new shelter was approved and slated to open in mid 2011 with the understanding that the old TLAC facility, already in disrepair, would be demolished.
By 2008, APA! started rescue work and began pulling animals from the TLAC euthanasia list so that we could make a measurable impact on the live release rate in the City of Austin. Our goal was to make Austin a No Kill City as fast as humanly possible. At this time, the city was at only a 45% live release rate with 10,000 to 14,000 animals dying every year. APA! volunteers showed up every day to see the animals listed to be killed by 11:30am the following morning, and pull as many as we could into foster homes.
By 2010, when Austin had a 72% live release rate (largely up because of APA!), the city council, championed by Mike Martinez and Laura Morrison and at the recommendation of the Animal Advisory Commission, voted to formally make Austin a No Kill City with a goal of a 90% live release. In the No Kill Implementation Plan that was passed with this vote, a section included keeping open an adoption center at TLAC, specifically by using the Davenport Building (TLAC’s main admin building), after the city shelter moved to its new location. Of course, we already had our eye on using TLAC as our future facility though we heard from Council offices we had a 0% chance of getting it.
By 2011, the year of the city shelter move, APA! helped the city achieve an 89% live release rate. And now we were openly advocating for taking over the old shelter (TLAC) so that we could continue to help Austin and have a building for our organization.
Surprisingly, APA! had to overcome massive obstacles to be able to occupy TLAC, even though it was empty and even though we were the driver of No Kill. The city had plans to tear it down, due to the dilapidated conditions that existed well before we started rescue. The city couldn’t sell it or use it to build anything other than a park or animal shelter since it is dedicated park land with a grandfather clause for animals. At the time, we had a rocky relationship with the city shelter staff due to the nature of how we supported them, by pulling animals off the euthanasia list rather than taking animals they wanted us to take who may or may not ever have been in danger of euthanasia. Although we were awarded the temporary use of TLAC, that relationship made it very hard to keep Lamar Beach for animals, even after we moved in.
In 2017, city council voted, this time championed by council members Kathie Tovo, Leslie Pool, Alison Alter, Steve Adler, Greg Casar to allow APA! to rebuild at TLAC and stay for 75 years, basing future plans on a document called the Lamar Beach Master Plan, that showed the general space we would occupy and what our buildings might look like.
Essentially, in Phase II of the master plan, with an unknown timeline, Cesar Chavez would be moved away from the lake and cross right through our current footprint. To accommodate that, APA! needed to move back towards the YMCA and the railroad track. In that vote, the council directed city staff to “negotiate and execute” the 75 year agreement over the next four years.
You might be thinking, who would want to build when we are sandwiched between Cesar Chavez and the railroad tracks? We would! We had looked for other property throughout Austin but faced neighborhood overlays that have a blanket clause requiring kennels to be voted on by the neighborhood. That was a painful and exhausting process and it was clear the only neighborhood in Austin that wanted us was the one right around TLAC. With the neighborhood restrictions throughout the City of Austin, we faced finding a property outside the city limits which would eliminate visibility of our important work. At the time, we abandoned the idea of an alternate location.
We began these negotiations, sure about our ability to rebuild based on the Master Plan, and expected to get to the 75 year contract signing quickly. However, as soon as the surveyors and architects got busy, it was made clear to us that land issues would halt immediate plans to fundraise and improve the shelter facilities at TLAC. These issues are detailed below:
The power lines over us are the heaviest duty type of transmission power line there is, meaning they cannot be buried. We worked hard with Austin Energy and there is no way around them. Nothing can be built on 30 feet of either side of them. We have TWO sets that run from one side to the other, eliminating over 120 feet of buildable space in a longitudinal section.
We have broached the subject of heavy renovations under the power lines since the power lines were raised after our buildings were built, but Austin Energy has assured us that any site plan request that comes through for renovation will be denied because they believe it is in our best interest to get out from under the lines.
There is a 72” water main that runs from the railroad tracks down to Cesar Chavez that cannot be built over and cannot be moved.
The railroad hill is partially owned by the railroad company and would cost $1M to purchase each of two small chunks that would be technically on our property.
The floodplain is outside the land we would be building on but it prevents us from moving our footprint anywhere else on the land and going through the process of demanding that the master plan be reviewed again.
The property known to us as the “Y Field” in the northeast corner behind us, is where we would be pushed to and it is currently owned by YMCA. In order for us to gain formal access to it, the Y and the city have to finish the agreement that requires the city to build a parking garage on Y property, closer to Cesar Chavez. The status of this is unclear, holding up our ability to formally attain the Y field that would be needed for us to build on.
There are many heritage trees on the property that we do not want to harm and that would be quite expensive to move.
After years of discussion with many city departments that control the entities above, it is clear that whatever space we have left at TLAC will likely be a fourth to a third of the size of the footprint we use today.
As a result, we believe we have no choice but to purchase another property, hopefully for use in addition to TLAC, in order to serve our full mission. This will prove difficult because of the neighborhood restrictions that exist in seemingly every neighborhood within the city limits. We are currently pursuing all leads on land within 30 minutes of downtown Austin for what we hope is ultimately a satellite facility.
So what does that have to do with the negotiation of our license agreement? It means that after years of discussion with many city departments, we have come to learn whatever space we have left at TLAC will likely be just a quarter to third of the footprint we use today. We are bitterly disappointed with this outcome and believe we have no choice but to add a second site because the city cannot fulfill all of our land needs as we once thought. The bottom line is the millions of dollars our non-profit organization provides in lifesaving services to the City of Austin annually, and will spend building at the site, far exceeds the value of having free land to build upon.
I want to be clear, we still want to rebuild whatever we can at TLAC because we believe the extra cost to us is worth it for our mission and for Austin. We know it is necessary for pets to be front and center in our city and if we leave, TLAC will never be used to help animals again. We know our city believes in No Kill as one of its core community principles. Our vision for the future of this land is to use it to show the world that No Kill is a crown jewel of Austin. It should serve as a Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the 500,000 pets that needlessly lost their lives at this site over the last 70 years, and be a sign that history will never repeat itself on Austin’s watch again.
We will continue to keep you updated on these matters and hope you, as one of our valued supporters, will help advocate for keeping the TLAC property for the animals after this short letter series ends. We will continue to look for new property regardless of what happens at TLAC and appreciate the leads our supporters send us. If you think you might have a land lead to send our way, you can find details of what we are looking for here.
As always, we are grateful for the support you have shown to APA! staff and to the pets that are counting on us. If our history has taught us anything, it’s that Austin believes in the value that animals bring to all of our lives and expects us to do everything we can to save them. Thank you for joining us and committing so much to this mission.
Thank you,
Ellen Jefferson, DVM President and CEO Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!
Recently we were lucky to have an amazing group from the UT Austin McCombs School of Business study what the capacity for people to foster animals in Austin really looks like, by comparing current census data to common trends among our [hundreds] of amazing volunteers currently fostering APA! animals.
What many people don’t know is that there is an entire machine of coordination and support behind any shelters with robust foster programs for homeless pets. The good news is that this machine is completely possible to build in any community and nurture to extend the ability to save the lives of companion animals at risk of euthanasia. And, thanks to this study, we have even more certainty on what we suspected to be a huge opportunity for new fosters in Austin.
First, Who exactly fosters?
The study matched active APA! foster parents’ demographics with Austin district census and survey data. Based on the number of current APA! fosters in each zip code, those ages 18-34, without pets, closer to the animal shelter and renters/single occupants are more likely to foster (both dogs and cats).
When these variables were compared with the census in the same zip codes, a potential 433 potential dog fosters and 498 potential cat fosters were identified! And that number could multiply if the households foster more than one animal in need.
Why do they foster?
The study also analyzed the demographic data of APA!’s current fosters to find the top 5 reasons for fostering:
New time and bandwidth
Not ready for a long-term commitment (adopting)
Love of animals/grew up with animals
Desire to help animals
Trial for future adoption
Based on this information, we are more knowledgeable than ever on who potential fosters are. And any city could pair these commonalities with their communities, plus best practices for building and maintaining a foster program [ampa resource link here] and we’d be looking at city by city solving a major portion of commonly being too under-resourced to save enough lives – by finding new resources outside of the shelter and into the community via foster homes.
Thank you to the McCombs School of Business team: Anurag Peddaiahgari, Drake Sides, Haoshu Yuwen, Nicholas Hill, Nicholas Solorzano, and Sandesh Kakade, for shining new light on the potential of fostering animals in Austin!
For those of you not yet fostering in Austin and are willing to join this lifesaving network, please email [email protected].
Sources: Simply Analytics/Census and APA! fosters data
The City of Austin’s Animal Advisory Commission recently created a Working Group to focus on Austin Animal Center’s shelter space concerns. The Commission held a Special Called meeting this past Monday to discuss the findings of the Working Group as well as hear APA!’s quarterly report. At Monday’s Animal Advisory Commission, APA! President and CEO, Dr. Ellen Jefferson presented. Below is a summary of her comments to the Commission.
Austin Pets Alive! is the largest city of Austin Animal Services partner in lifesaving and the largest subsidizer of the city’s budget to serve Austin animals.
APA! takes animals that have medical and behavioral issues that require a higher cost per animal than the average healthy animal and care. APA! focuses on these animals in an effort to have a measurable effect on the live release rate at Austin Animal Center (AAC).
In June alone, of all the animals that were transferred from AAC to any partner, APA! took 77% of those animals and over 200 times the number taken by the other brick and mortar shelters in Austin.
APA!’s cost to care for the animals pulled this past quarter was approximately $500,000 – $750,000. These numbers are currently being validated through an external agency and will be reflected as accurately as possible in future reports.
APA! receives no funding from the City of Austin but through a license agreement does receive use of the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) facility, which on the rental market could reasonably expect to receive about $8 per square foot per year in rent for the use (kennel), the condition its in (deteriorated), and the location it is in which, at best, is $100,000 per quarter. APA! therefore contributed between $400,000-$650,000 last quarter alone to subsidize the city’s budget to serve Austin animals. That is just for the animals we’re taking in from AAC, not for the other work we’re doing in the community.
APA!’s mission is to eliminate the unnecessary killing of shelter animals. Over the last 10 years of this license agreement, the role of APA’s support at AAC has shifted away from lifesaving and into serving as overflow for Austin Animal Center, which was never the intention of the license agreement that was drafted 10 years ago. That’s what we’ve been trying to re-negotiate for the last five years. What that means is that Austin Pets Alive! is serving many animals that should not be at risk of euthenasia in the city’s publicly-funded shelter.
AAC has received an increase in budget of more than $10 million since the original license agreement was signed, and many supports have been put in place over the years by the Austin City Council. APA! is 100% committed to continuing to serve as a safety net for animals that cannot be saved through taxpayer dollars and is currently negotiating a license agreement that more accurately reflects the mission of APA! and the responsible utilization of all the funds put towards animals, whether they are donated or taxpayer-funded.
More than a decade ago, Austin Pets Alive! stepped forward to provide support to the City of Austin in order to improve, and eventually fix, the Austin Animal Center, which at the time was killing more than 14,000 pets annually. Our goal was to teach AAC to implement best practices in No Kill sheltering and transfer animals to APA! that were at imminent risk of dying. We have since partnered with the city to advocate for policy changes and budget growth while offering free consultative and educational services. Then and now, this has a direct cost to APA! of millions of dollars annually. APA! has provided all of this to the city at no cost to them, but at great cost to us. Through our 501c3, we spend millions each year on the animals we pull directly from AAC. In addition, a 2017 study conservatively measures the annual economic impact of the No Kill movement in Austin at more than $157 million.
While we’ve made tremendous progress as a community, becoming the largest No Kill city in America, today we find ourselves at a crossroads.This summer, AAC intakes, adoptions, the number of pets returned to owners, and volunteer hours are at historic lows. Austin Animal Center is headed in the wrong direction and the City of Austin needs to take corrective action. We are fully committed to maintaining Austin’s status as the safest place in the country for homeless pets. Now we need our colleagues at AAC to do their part.
The above graph shows June data for the past five years, indicating that the burden of animals is at a historic, pre-COVID, low. We collected data in several key areas, including volunteer hours and adoptions, to share with you here. While these charts show performance metrics at the Austin Animal Center are on the decline, AAC’s director is threatening to euthanize animals who have been safe in Austin for more than six years. Foster placements are down and APA! is still having to rescue pets from AAC who should be adopted from AAC, simply because the leadership at the shelter refuses to follow best practices or to adhere to either the No Kill Implementation plan or the 95% resolution passed by City Council in 2019.
While we have long been the City’s largest transfer partner, we also do so much more than simply transfer animals to APA!. We provide food and supplies to homeless pet owners and respond in crisis situations like the recent winter storm. We also have an online community of more than 15,000 individuals known as the PASS program. Through this innovative mutual aid platform, APA! helps thousands of pet owners annually who are faced with having to give up their animals due to housing loss, medical issues, or temporary crises. We also provide hundreds of jobs, offer endless volunteer opportunities to Austinites – both groups and individuals, and offer free consulting and operations support to Austin Animal Center through our Maddie’s Fund Learning Academy.
In addition to all of this, we have helped pass the No Kill Resolution/Implementation Plan, Animal Code Amendment Ordinance, 95% Live Release Ordinance, advocated for AAC to receive 10 million dollars in increased funding, shared protocols and training with AAC management to help them implement best practices, and donated countless hours of peer-to-peer training.
The Austin Animal Center, now one of the most highly resourced government shelters in Texas, has the ability to permanently solve the problems that lead to preventable, seasonal overcrowding.
Here is what we are asking AAC to do now, in order to build a sustainable, public-private partnership with Austin Pets Alive!:
Submit the data required in the Animal Code Amendment Ordinance. Transparent, monthly reporting will clearly illustrate to the public and the Animal Advisory Commission that areas of performance that need immediate improvement, including number of foster placements, number of adoptions, and the number of animals returned to their owners.
Implement emergency space protocols and AmPA!’s other proven protocols in order to avoid future, recurring capacity issues. APA! provides support and guidance to hundreds of shelters around the nation. As we offer our transport triage services and transfer-in help, we ask our shelters to do their part to minimize the number of pets APA! has to get out of the shelter.
Remove bottlenecks to outcomes. Currently, adopted pets cannot go home for days or weeks longer because they are awaiting sterilization surgery. These pets have families waiting for them but are taking up valuable kennel space because AAC procedures are inefficient and proven programs have been eliminated, like the VIP adoption program. This is just one example of where AAC needs to work with both the Animal Advisory Commission and the expert team at American Pets Alive! to improve operational efficiency to avoid capacity issues.
Join the hundreds of animal shelters around the nation who are participating in the Human Animal Support Services Project and learn how other successful large organizations, including several large municipal shelters in Texas, are reducing shelter intake, serving more pets and people in their communities, and keeping families together through pet support services.
Each year, we save thousands of lives of pets right here in Austin and Travis County, and in the counties immediately surrounding Austin. We also provide support, education, and animal transport guidance to shelters all over Texas and beyond. Our ultimate goal is to focus on animals who, without APA’s help, would die or face being killed in a shelter. For this reason, we ask shelters we support to do everything they can to keep as many pets as possible in their homes and communities, in order to reduce shelter intake. We also ask that they learn and follow American Pets Alive! best practices, in order to save as many lives as they can and to serve as many pets as possible within their own cities and towns.
Consultations: Our American Pets Alive! instructors are proven professionals, with a decade or more of experience in the animal welfare field. We offer consultative support for shelters, in order to make recommendations to streamline operations, increase lifesaving, prevent needless pet intakes, and keep all shelter pets healthy. If our team does help your organization transport pets OR if we ‘pull’ animals from you into our organization, we ask that you receive and implement recommendations from our AmPA! team so you can achieve long term solutions to the root causes of the challenges in your organization.
Transport: If your shelter faces chronic overcrowding and you are severely limited on resources to save them, our team can assist you in finding viable transport solutions. Transport is not a ‘magic’ solution to difficulties faced by underfunded, high-volume shelters, but it can be tremendously helpful for some organizations. Here is an example of how El Paso Animal Services is utilizing transport to prevent overcrowding. Reach out if you have a question about how we can help you create a transport relationship with a receiving shelter, get connected to existing transport solutions, or ask anything else about transport.
Transfers to Austin Pets Alive!: In some cases, we may be able to take animals into our organization, with most pets arriving in Austin and heading immediately to loving foster homes. We primarily focus on animals who do not have any other viable options, including pets with contagious illnesses, injured and sick animals, pets with special needs, and in some cases, pets who are otherwise healthy but face imminent euthanasia for any reason. These spaces are very limited, and the need always exceeds our ability to help. If you need help, or are an organization that wants to contribute to our efforts, contact us.
What we ask our partner organizations: Thanks to the generosity of Maddie’s Fund Family Foundation, as well as the tireless support from our Austin community, we are able to offer support and guidance free of charge. Our team is made up of just a few folks and we’re aiming to help organizations all over the nation, so we ask our partners to be part of the solution. If we assist your organization in any way, we ask you to commit to the following:
Follow recommendations (to the very best of your ability) of our AmPA! instructors. They help hundreds of shelters annually and they know their stuff!
Become a Human Animal Support Services partner shelter. HASS is a collaborative of more than 500 organizations and 1,000 animal welfare professionals working together to solve today’s toughest animal welfare challenges.
All levels of the organization work alongside our team to help solve the root causes of your challenges so in the future, we can focus on other shelters in crisis.
What AmPA!-supported shelters have to say:
“AmPA! brings hope. Animal Welfare is a very emotional and lonely existence. Even with us all being in the same field of work, AmPA! gives validation and hope to our everyday lives at the shelter and on the streets.”
“Our live outcomes have changed drastically! Before AmPA! training our local shelter was as 33% live release, since June 2019 it has been at 90+%!”
“The best part of AmPA! visits is how inspired our staff is after they leave. We are a rural small non-profit so being able to see the big picture has been game changing for our team.”
“I appreciate that you provide one on one conversations to help with specific questions and problems in OUR shelter. It’s better than doing research because a live person is hearing your issues and giving ideas on what to do next.”
“Our staff LOVES when AmPA! staff visit. All the AmPA! staff who have visited us are members of our internal organizational page and often participate. Our team gets so excited when they visit and everyone learns so much while they are here. Most of our staff have had no prior exposure to the national scene so feeling a part of a larger movement has been great for their self-identities and commitment to our organization. The presence of AmPA! staff has been invaluable.”
Older than dinosaurs and trees, sharks have endured a lot throughout their 450 million years on Earth. They’ve even survived five mass extinctions, including the asteroid that wiped out 75% of life on the planet. But many species of these aquatic apex predators are now in danger of dying out forever.
“Sharks are in crisis globally,” says the WWF. Overfishing (hunting for their meat, fins, and other parts before they can reproduce fast enough) is their biggest threat along with unintentionally getting caught in fishing gear and the effects of climate change.
Of the thousand known species of sharks and rays (sharks’ closest living relatives), over a third of them are at risk of extinction. And since sharks are “indicators of ocean health,” as sharks go, so does the delicate balance of marine ecosystems.
From gathering data to educating the public to advocating for underwater life, many conservation groups are on a mission to protect these prehistoric creatures before they are lost to history. Click here to support their work or keep reading to learn how they’re taking action.
Research is key to conservation. Scientists rely on this information to inform wildlife and habitat management and conservation plans while advocates use data to develop and recommend policy to public officials. This research can also be used for public safety purposes as well as to educate future generations that will inherit the planet.
Often conducted in remote and dangerous environments, shark research requires time and money. But that work is paying off as researchers continually identify new species of sharks, such as those that can walk on the ocean floor and glow in the dark.
These research-oriented organizations are exploring the world’s reefs, seas, coastlines, and oceans to ultimately benefit shark conservation:
Atlantic White Shark Conservancy – Based on the southern tip of Cape Cod, the conservancy’s main mission is white shark research and education. Offering expeditions to see the animals in their natural habitat, educational Shark Centers open to the public, and youth science programs, the non-profit also runs the Sharktivity app where user-reported shark sightings help researchers learn more about shark travel and behavior and keep sharks and humans safe from each other.
Beneath the Waves –– Since 2013, Beneath The Waves has used science and technology to promote ocean health and conservation policy. Their threatened species initiative collects research on sharks using tools such as tags, sensors, drones, and satellites to better understand shark biology and movement. The non-profit launched the first long-term study of large-scale shark sanctuaries and discovered deep-sea “hotspots” for sharks in the Caribbean.
MarAlliance– Headquartered in Houston, MarAlliance conducts research in tropical seas to support wildlife conservation in places such as the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea. Their work includes identifying potential sites for marine protected areas from fishing, training local fishing communities, and monitoring population levels of threatened marine life, like some species of sharks.
Mote Marine Lab and Aquarium – Founded in 1955 on Florida’s west coast, Mote Marine Laboratory has been “obsessed” with sharks since their beginning. Today, their Sharks & Rays Conservation Research Program is one of 20 marine research programs studying human and environmental health, sustainable fishing, and animals such as manatees and dolphins. Mote also runs an aquarium equipped with a 135,000-gallon shark tank viewable on a live stream.
FinsAttached – While the Colorado-based non-profit aims to protect the health of the entire ocean, much of its research focuses on sharks since their position at the top of the marine food chain influences the health of the entire ecosystem. Fins Attached has produced many publications on shark research and allows donors to join some research expeditions, all with conservation and education in mind.
Unfortunately for sharks, NOAA says, “What makes them unique also makes them vulnerable.” Some species of sharks, like great whites, are slow to reproduce: they can take decades to reach breeding age, have pregnancies last up to three years, and produce small litters. And warming waters are shifting some of their migration patterns beyond protected areas, putting them at risk of fishing.
All of it is hurting their numbers. A 2021 report showed over the last 50 years, global shark and ray populations have fallen more than 70%.
“If we don’t do anything, it will be too late,” says biologist and study co-author Nick Dulvy. “It’s much worse than other animal populations we’ve been looking at,” adding the downward trend for sharks is even steeper than those for elephants and rhinos, which are “iconic in driving conservation efforts on land.”
While the study found we may approach a “point of no return,” there are encouraging signs that conservation efforts are starting to work for white sharks and hammerheads thanks to government bans, policies, and quotas.
There is still a long way to go, however, so many conservation organizations like these are dedicated to rescuing and protecting these vulnerable creatures:
PADI AWARE Foundation – The world’s largest scuba diver training organization, PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) officially launched its global conservation charity in 1992 to promote cleaner and healthier oceans. One of its goals is to reduce the amount of sharks and rays threatened with extinction by 25%. Data collected from its new Global Shark & Ray Census will help with ongoing and future efforts to protect vulnerable species.
Galápagos Conservancy – Some 600 miles west of Ecuador lies one of the world’s most famous and unique ecosystems: the Galápagos Islands. As the only American non-profit solely devoted to protecting and restoring the archipelago, the Galápagos Conservancy is working to rewild and save endangered species, including sharks. The organization is helping research breeding areas of scalloped hammerhead and blacktip sharks and supporting efforts to learn more about the high concentration of whale sharks that congregate in the Galápagos Marine Reserve.
Shark Advocates International –– Founded by veteran shark advocate Sonja Fordham, Shark Advocates International is a project of The Ocean Foundation. The non-profit promotes science-based shark conservation policies such as fishing limits, species-specific protections, and finning bans at the local, national, and international level.
WildAid –– Known for its high-profile media campaigns, WildAid fights the global illegal wildlife trade by changing consumer attitudes through awareness of the multi-billion dollar industry. Its anti-shark fin campaign in China featuring NBA legend Yao Ming has been especially successful, seeing an 80% drop in shark fin consumption in the country. Through its WildAid Marine Program, the non-profit also helps protect sharks around the world, including the Galápagos Marine Reserve, home to the densest shark population on Earth.
Wildlife Conservation Society – Founded in 1895, the Wildlife Conservation Society is one of the oldest organizations of its kind. In addition to operating world-famous parks like the Bronx Zoo, WCS runs long-term wildlife protection projects across the world, including an initiative to develop and implement policies to help protect sharks from overfishing in low-income, ocean-dependent countries.
WWF– With five million supporters, projects in nearly 100 countries, and one iconic panda logo, the World Wildlife Fund (known outside of the US and Canada as the World Wild Fund for Nature) is one of the largest and most well-known conservation organizations on the planet. WWF has partnered with the international wildlife trade monitoring non-profit TRAFFIC for a joint shark conservation program with local projects all over the world.
It’s not just sharks that are vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the water – the entire marine ecosystem is at risk due to unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, and pollution, which has reached “unprecedented” levels within the last 20 years.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest concentration of ocean plastic in the world, is now twice the size of Texas. Scientists are seeing the highest ocean surface temperatures on record this year along with a “totally unprecedented” marine heat wave in the north Atlantic Ocean. Researchers warn all coral reefs on Earth could die out by the end of the century.
Experts say it’s not too late to reverse course, but the window to do so is shrinking. A report in the journal Nature found marine wildlife to be “remarkably resilient” and could recover by 2050 with urgent and widespread conservation interventions.
Organizations like the ones below are committed to protecting the health of the entire ocean and all life within it:
Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute– Started in 1963 by one of the founders of SeaWorld, HSWRI’s mission is to conserve and renew marine life for a healthier planet. Although the non-profit institute exists as an independent entity, it still collaborates with the for-profit park on scientific research and both act as “first responders” to rescue marine wildlife.
Ocean Conservancy– The Ocean Conservancy’s roots date back to the 1970’s when it campaigned to save whales and other vulnerable animals. It later expanded its mission to protect the broader ecosystem, holding its first International Coastal Cleanup in 1986, and since then has collected more than 348 million pounds of trash with the help of 17 million volunteers. Other current programs include advancing ocean justice, addressing climate change, advocating for ocean health funding and legislation, and promoting sustainable fishing.
The Ocean Foundation– Working in 45 countries across six continents, the community foundation operates conservation initiatives focused on climate resilience, ocean literacy and leadership, ocean science equity, and sustainable plastic production and consumption. The non-profit also offers training, research and development, and support for coastal communities.
WILDCOAST– Known as COSTASALVAJE in Spanish, WILDCOAST’s work spans 38 million acres primarily across California and Mexico to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems and wildlife. The non-profit works to protect shorelines, coastal wetlands, mangrove forests, and coral reefs and establish protected areas for threatened sea turtles and gray whales.
Wild Oceans – Focused on the future of sustainable fishing, Tampa-based Wild Oceans is the oldest non-profit in America dedicated to marine fisheries management. The non-profit’s Large Marine Fish Conservation initiative focuses on conserving big fish such as marlin, swordfish, tuna, and sharks – “the lions, tigers and wolves of the sea” – to keep the entire ocean food web and habitat healthy.
Click here to support these organization’s work and help save sharks before it’s too late.
As you likely know, Austin Pets Alive!’s daily work centers around our mission to end the unnecessary killing of shelter pets, which sounds generic but in reality, is extremely difficult. It means that we purposely take pets in who are either already scheduled or soon to be scheduled to be euthanized. There’s no easy way to categorize these populations of animals as they vary. They can be like the animals we save in deep South Texas, healthy adorable pets with no space to go to like we saw during the ice storm, or the animals who have been chosen for a reason to be killed or eliminated from the population.
It’s the latter group that I’ll speak about here. We realized that the most measurable way to make an impact in ending the killing of shelter pets was to actually intervene at the last second before the animal was facing euthanasia, rather than pull animals into our program who were at the front end of their stay in a shelter. The reason that is important is that many rescue groups have the resources to help animals who are ready for adoption and we found a huge gap in the number of groups who can help the animals at the end of the line, especially en masse in large shelters.
We built our programs around these animals – puppies with parvovirus, bottle babies, cats with ringworm, those with Feline Leukemia, etc. Over time we have been able to expand the limits, beyond the city of Austin, of where we intervene in the deaths of these medical groups of animals. However, for big dogs with significant behavior challenges, it is much harder. We have only been able to intervene in the deaths of the behavior dogs in the city of Austin, Austin Animal Center, because of the expense, time, and difficulty in finding solutions for these dogs.
Just like with medical cases, we know we will lose some but we take them anyway and we try.
If you’d like to read more about Zydeco and the difficult situation we are in, please take time to hear from one of his closest friends and one who’s worked with him the longest, Hana Garner our Dog Behavior Training Manager. Her letter tells his story from start to finish and will offer insight into why we’ve made the decision we have.
As we start to see the light of normalcy return with the release of COVID vaccines, we have a little break from what has felt like back-to-back emergencies to share our plans for the future at Austin Pets Alive!. Our board of directors and executive staff have been working hard on creating and starting to implement our 2021-2023 strategic plan.
This plan brings our mission sharply into focus. If you need a refresher, our mission is to promote and provide the resources, education, and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals. We recognize if we tighten our efforts, forget what we know as our “status quo” and really drill down on all the ways we, as a large lifesaving organization, can physically intervene in the deaths of shelter pets, we can actually find even more ways to save lives with what we have and know. Our eyes are set on making Texas No Kill and we’re not stopping there.
After the recent snowstorm, we got a taste of what the animals are like who are still losing their lives in Texas as we madly transported more than 1,000 of them to other cities that wanted to help. These are sweet cuddly little kittens, small fluffy dogs, labs, huskies and so many more deserving lives that we know from our experience in Austin are among the easiest to save. One story in particular hit home–a sweet little chihuahua mix named Hamilton in Laredo who was scheduled to be killed. He was scooped up for this transport and now is happy and safe in a home in Jackson Hole, WY! We had never thought we could save thousands more per year until now, and dogs like Hamilton deserve our brainstorming and reassessing so that more lives are saved.
Here is some food for thought:
It is estimated that 150,000 animals are still needlessly dying in Texas shelters every year.
In most northern U.S. communities, there is an overabundance of adopters, which is keenly felt by organizations which scramble to find adoptable pets to meet demand.
It costs a fraction of our total per animal to serve as a distributor to shelters and rescues as it does to take them all in and do all the work ourselves before adoption.
So why haven’t we transported out all along? Over the last 12 years, we have steered clear of transport, except during Hurricane Harvey and then only for non-Austin animals, because Austin is the safest community in the country for pets. Sending pets from Austin to anywhere else is inherently more dangerous for them. Unfortunately, that thinking has gotten in the way of us taking a hard look at how we might be able to help pets still dying all over the state. While Austin is safest, only a tiny fraction of the 150,000 animals losing their lives each year in Texas can get into Austin. If we start to think of Austin instead as a pit stop in the journey from one very dangerous place in TX to a much less dangerous place in the north, even if that final destination is not at Austin’s level of No Kill experience, we start to open the door to making Texas No Kill.
You might be thinking, “But taking some of your attention off of Austin-only animals makes you less effective for Austin!” We believe the opposite is true. We know that if we are able to save the masses of Texas lives more efficiently, we can ourselves focus on saving the few that truly need our specialized support more effectively. By helping more cities stop killing, we help more animals join homes both in Austin and beyond. By solving for the reasons animals die on a grander scale than just our own backyard, Austin continues as the beacon of hope for other cities and states. By ensuring that the money entrusted to us to save lives saves as many pets as possible, we give every animal, no matter its lineage, an equitable chance to not die in a shelter without the benefit of someone trying to help.
Transport is one small piece of our strategic future. We will be sharing a lot more in the coming weeks. Thank you for being on this journey with APA! as we continue to push the lifesaving needle.
AUSTIN, TX – Texas Pets Alive!, Austin Pets Alive!’s advocacy arm, is excited to announce that House Bill 2510, introduced by Representative Candy Noble (R-District 89), will ensure no nonprofit animal rescue will have taxes imposed on adoption fees. HB 2510 is a companion bill to SB 197, filed by Senator Jane Nelson (R-District 12).
Texas Pets Alive! works to promote and advocate for those rescue and shelter organizations that save the most at-risk companion animals in Texas, understanding that rescues across the state often pull homeless pets with expensive medical cases from municipal and county shelters, and cover the costs for those procedures, saving taxpayer money and saving lives.
“I’m proud to carry House Bill 2510. Families who are willing to open their homes to unwanted animals through pet adoption should be applauded by Texans, not taxed by the state,” said Representative Candy Noble. “The efforts of those who work in our rescue and shelter organizations should be rightly focused on the care and placement of the pets, not in the collection and paperwork associated with sales tax receipts.”
HB 2510 clarifies that rescues are exempt in statute from the Texas Comptroller’s Office imposing taxes on adoption fees. The Comptroller’s office has reviewed this legislation and determined that the bill can be administered as written.
“Rescue organizations are a lifeline for large municipal and county shelters, and ensure that animals have more options for leaving the shelter alive,” said Katie Jarl Coyle, Executive Director of Texas Pets Alive!. “Providing this sales tax relief for local organizations ensures they can easily continue to support shelters by pulling the most expensive animals and recouping fees for those costs through adoptions.”
World-leading creatives, activists and conservationists are talking to the Species Unite podcast about how they dedicate their lives and expertise to help animals, thrive on plant-based diets and are changing the narrative around how we treat other species across the planet
Press Release –
updated: Jun 30, 2020
NEW YORK, June 30, 2020 (Newswire.com)
– “Species Unite,” a podcast that offers a glimpse into some of the best minds in animal advocacy, is the much-needed beacon of hope everyone can use during these troubling times.
Each episode sees host Elizabeth Novogratz speak with the people who dedicate their lives and expertise to helping animals. Leading photographers, philosophers, scientists, writers, undercover investigators, lawyers, animal experts, and activists are among those telling stories of their victories and their ongoing battles.
Whilst the issues they address are often startling and horrific, they importantly offer an inspiring look at how one person can help change the world for animals.
The podcast has just dropped series four – and the lineup shows just how animal issues are more relevant and urgent than ever. One episode looks at what’s really going on for animals in China right now. With the coronavirus pandemic putting the country’s wildlife trade and wet markets under global scrutiny, Species Unite chats with Pei Su, the founder of one of China’s leading animal organizations, ACTAsia, to reveal insights from an Asian perspective – a perspective that’s often overshadowed during discussions on animals in China.
Other episodes instead offer a perfect distraction if listeners want some relief from coronavirus talk. Leading fashion designer Joshua Katcher, who has appeared in Vogue and GQ and counts the likes of Joaquin Phoenix among those who wear his designs, discusses his work in making fashion ethical and free from animal exploitation.
Fascinated (and horrified) by Tiger King? The Species Unite podcast has been talking to the experts about America’s tiger problem, too, and explores the animal issues that the Netflix hit often glosses over. Stories range from leading specialist Tim Harrison, who has spent over 40 years fighting to get exotic animals out of people’s homes and into sanctuaries, to journalist Sharon Guynup, who spent two years investigating America’s captive tigers for a groundbreaking National Geographic exposé.
Lady Freethinker’s undercover footage helps score an unprecedented conviction for animal abuse in Chile
Press Release –
updated: Sep 9, 2019
LOS ANGELES, September 9, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– An undercover investigation in Chile by Los Angeles-based animal rights organization Lady Freethinker resulted in a criminal court handing down the nation’s highest-ever sentence for animal cruelty last week.
On Aug. 29, a historic first occurred when the defendant — an illegal dog breeder and known dogfighting organizer — received the maximum sentence of three years imprisonment, along with the maximum fine possible, and a lifelong ban on ever having an animal in his possession again.
“It is the first conviction achieved here in the San Felipe Prosecutor’s Office regarding the crime of animal abuse resulting in death,” said Prosecutor Palacios Bobadilla, in a press release. “For animal groups, a precedent is set regarding animal abuse… it is the maximum penalty established by the law: the three years of imprisonment and…the maximum fine of three Monthly Tax Units.”
LONG ROAD TO VICTORY
The case began in 2018 when in July, LFT sent an undercover reporter to the defendant’s property in the Chilean town of Llay Llay, and secretly filmed footage of nearly two dozen dogs living in deplorable conditions. All were sick, wounded and starving.
LFT’s findings were pretty gruesome: Dogs were kept on short, heavy chains, or in small, filthy kennels with no food or water. Their otherwise-empty bowls were coated in green slime.
One pit bull had scars and wounds on his neck consistent with those of dog fights. Many dogs had eye infections or other untreated ailments. Three dogs were already dead, their bodies decomposing in the dirt. Veterinary examiners believe they starved to death.
Additionally, more than 30 hens and cockfighting roosters were caged on the premises. Nobody appeared to live on the property to care for any of the animals.
The footage led to the defendant’s arrest by the Chilean police and in the seizure of 21 dogs from the property. The three deaths aggravated the animal cruelty charges, leading to an increased sentence. Meanwhile, the surviving dogs were placed in foster care and have since found loving homes.
Following the investigation, Lady Freethinker submitted to the San Felipean court a petition with more than 22,000 signatures from people around the world calling for justice in this case, and urging prosecutors to start treating animal cruelty cases with the severity they deserve. 14 months later, their voices were heard and a historic ruling was made.
“This historic sentence is a tremendous win for the animals of Chile,” said Lady Freethinker President Nina Jackel. “Gone are the days when animal abusers can commit violent acts without fear of consequence. My sincerest thanks to the prosecutors and judge in this case for taking a strong stand against animal cruelty.”
Lady Freethinker’s recent investigations include exposing the deadly dogfighting trade on Facebook and a dog-meat farm in South Korea.
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ABOUT LADY FREETHINKER (www.ladyfreethinker.org)
Founded in 2013, LFT is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit media organization dedicated to exposing and stopping the suffering of animals, humans and planet. Through its undercover investigations, news reporting, and petitions, LFT aims to end cruelty and promote humane treatment of all species, bringing to light suffering that may otherwise go ignored.
BRISBANE, Australia, October 15, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– The iconic Aussie Firefighters calendar is reaching out to the sexiest, fittest firemen from around the world to join them on the Gold Coast, Australia in April 2019 for the making of the very first “International Firefighters Calendar”.
Firefighters from around the world will be vying for only 11 spots. The winners will join the hottest Australian firefighters to make the world’s first International Firefighters Calendar.
“With the explosion of worldwide interest in the calendar, it only made sense for us to invite the hottest firefighters from around the globe here to the beautiful Gold Coast to be a part of the world’s very first ‘International Firefighters Calendar’”. – David Rogers – Director – Australian Firefighters Calendar.
With the inclusion of the international firefighters, funds from calendar sales will now also be donated back to animal charities located in those participating countries.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR VIDEO AND PHOTOS FROM THE PHOTO SHOOT
This year, however, we must make mention of the newest addition to the Australian Firefighters Calendar collection… Cats!
The biggest surprise from last year was the viral sensation that came from one of their Facebook posts featuring the Australian firefighters with kittens. The response was so overwhelming they felt the need to expand the photo shoot this year to include a cat calendar for the 2019 season.
“The biggest interest in this calendar seems to be coming from Asia, Spain, Portugal, Mexico and South America.” – David Rogers – Director –Australian Firefighters Calendar
The 2019 Cat calendar will join the always popular Dog, Animal and Hot Firefighter calendars to help raise money for charities around Australia and overseas.
“We are very excited to start working with local Australian and international animal shelters. We felt it was important to use the calendar’s social media presence to shine a light on the incredible work they all do. Even a small donation to these organisations can make an enormous difference and we look forward to expanding our support to these charities.” – David Rogers – Director Australian Firefighters Calendar
Again this year the Australian Firefighters Calendar will be donating to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. Several images in this year’s Australian Firefighters Animal calendar were taken at Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo.
“We are so excited to be involved with the 2019 Australian Firefighters Calendar again. The funds they raise help to save and protect Australian native wildlife in South East Queensland. They truly are Wildlife Warriors and we’re so proud they are joining us again to help save our wildlife.” – Bindi Irwin
“Dad loved photography and so do I. It really connects people with wildlife in a way they might not have been able to before, so for the Australian Firefighters Calendar to feature some of our own animals, that’s pretty awesome.” – Robert Irwin
Since 1993 firefighters from Australia’s Urban, Rural, Aviation, Armed Forces and Corporate fire-fighting services have been coming together to create the world’s most iconic calendar.
After 17 rigorous days of photography, the final images are put together to create the iconic Australian Firefighters Calendar for fans across the globe.
The Australian Firefighters Calendar has donated over $2.8 million dollars to various charities around Australia with $1.7 million dollars of that being donated in the past 4 years alone.
The Australian Firefighters Calendar donates vital funds to the Children’s Hospital Foundation in Queensland, The Starlight Foundation in New South Wales, My Room Children’s Cancer Charity in Victoria, The Cancer Council in South Australia and The Salvation Army in ACT.
Nationally the calendar donates funds to Mates4Mates, Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors, Precious Paws Animal Rescue, Safe Haven Animal Rescue, Save a Horse, Healing Hooves and AMS Cat Haven.
In 2017 with a social media reach of 2.7 billion people around the globe, the calendar story, videos and images are seen in every language across the world. The iconic Australian Firefighters Calendar has become one of the world’s most loved calendars and now firefighters from around the world will make this a truly global phenomenon.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR VIDEO AND PHOTOS FROM THE PHOTO SHOOT
