The seven deadly sins of 'overpopulation' - Saving Pets

There are some who would zealously defend that in Australia we have dog and cat overpopulation.

?250,000 pets are killed each year in shelters, therefore we have overpopulation?

And others who would repeat the popular mantra ?don?t breed or buy while shelter pets die?, which implies at its core that all the while shelter pets are being killed in shelters, that there is a supply-driven, not-enough-homes type of overpopulation.

The truth, as always, is slightly more complicated.

Defining overpopulation

Let?s say you have an island, and on that island lives a population of cats.

The island has a small human city, but no formal animal management program. Does that island have cat overpopulation?

Nope. The island has the exact number of cats that the resources of the island can support. Cats are born, some live to breed again, and then they die. The island has the exactly right amount of cats, if we?re measuring them simply by cat biology. This is the baseline for any animal population in any environment, in the world.

Let?s say now, the people on the island decide that they don?t like the cats. Do we have overpopulation now?

1. Human-preference overpopulation

While the population of cats has remained exactly the same, it could be argued that yes, we do now have human-preference overpopulation. The people don?t like the cats, or they feel they shouldn?t be there, or they feel sorry for them and believe they are suffering. Therefore there is ?too many?.

Human-preference overpopulation can be seen whenever humans and animals are forced to share space and the humans decide that either through a distaste for the animals, or a belief that they shouldn?t exist, that there is ?too many?.

This has nothing to do with biology or even actual numbers, but is purely driven by human preference.

In this instance we?re using the example of cats, but human-preference overpopulation can extend to other non-useful animals who humans determine to be non-native. While an enormous population of sheep in Australia hardly rates a mention (because they?re useful), Indian Mynas tend receive a lot of hatred (because they?re non-native).

Sometimes human-preference overpopulation occurs for native animals too; galahs and other flocking parrots, snakes, crocodiles, spiders and dingoes etc. have all been targeted for destruction, under the banner of human-preference overpopulation.

You are not useful and may even be annoying or dangerous? you are overpopulated.

Now let?s say an animal shelter opens up on the island and people start taking cats they don?t want to the shelter. A city ranger also begins trapping cats and impounding cats.

2. Shelter overpopulation

So now we likely have shelter overpopulation. Even though the original population of cats has potentially remained the same, the number of cats trapped and brought to the shelter is now a way of measuring and concluding that there is ?too many? cats.

Shelter overpopulation is what most people are referring to, when they talk about overpopulation. It asserts that there are more pets entering shelters and being made available for adoption, than there are homes available to those pets.

Shelter overpopulation (and the wish to reduce shelter killing), is generally at the core of most initiatives to manage pets more effectively. The supporting evidence of shelter overpopulation is nearly always pets being killed. This is an especially powerful method of proclaiming overpopulation as the community generally doesn?t want to see dogs and cats killed.

Shelter overpopulation depends on there being more pets entering shelters and becoming available for adoption, than homes being available to them. Unfortunately for its supporters, this does not stand up to even the most basic scrutiny;

• when rescue pets are marketed effectively, they nearly always receive more than one applicant for adoption. If the pet is an attractive breed, a small size dog, or a young pet (puppy or kitten), then it can receive dozens of applications. Demand for adoptable pets then, would seem to outstrip supply.
• the majority of local pounds (not ?super pounds?) only process a few hundred pets for adoption each year. In those same localities pet shops, hobby breeders and BYB tend to operate successfully, suggesting that there is a demand for pets that the pound is not effectively reaching.
• the majority of cats entering shelters (up to 80%) are either completely untame, or only semi-tame, meaning that a new home is not what is required ? instead programs which keep these cats out of pounds (trap and release) are.
• the majority of local council pounds do not run No Kill programs, meaning many pets who are killed are not being offered for adoption at all. The issue of ?the number of available homes? is therefore irrelevant.

When we actually look at the national figures they also put doubt on the claim of shelter overpopulation.

There are currently 3.41 million owned dogs and 2.35 million owned cats (5.8 million) in Australia. The oft quoted ?250,000 pets killed?? is therefore 4.3% of the total pet population. A very low number by any measure.

Rather than shelters being a bad things for pets, they are actually a community service that will always need to exist. In any imperfect society, there will be a population of disadvantaged people, some people who meet some misfortune over the year, and even some people who are just ?irresponsible??. and these groups of people may need to part with their pets.

These situations will always exist and while we can make great improvements for pets in shelters at the grassroots level, there will always be a population of pets who will need help.

Additional issues with using shelter overpopulation as the metric, is that there are several things which the shelters themselves can do artificially inflate this number;

• a shelter being paid per animal intake (which tends to make their processes impoundment focused)
• animal trapping programs (picking up strays, deliberately trapping unowned animals)
• programs which encourage the public to trap animals
• laws which see owned pets seized for non-compliance (ie. mandatory desexing, licencing laws)

What we?ve seen with the growth of the No Kill movement is that the key to the elimination of shelter killing begins within the shelter itself.

When a shelter markets their pets effectively, communicates positively with their community and implement programs which keep pets out of shelters ? rather than working to impound them ? then the killing is eliminated.

3. Ethical overpopulation

Overpopulation can also be a kind of measure of a particular person?s ethical position.

The existence of puppy farms is due to a demand for puppies outside that which the hobby breeders and backyard breeders had been supplying. Puppy farms tend to produce the popular breeds of the day, and distribute them through retail channels. In short, the market existed and puppy farmers filled it.

The problem isn?t one of demand ? 450,000 dogs and 165,000 cats are sold every year ? the problem is the out-of-control supply through puppy mills, backyard breeders and irresponsible pet owners who refuse to desex their animals.
The proper value of a pet?s life ? The Herald Sun

At the same time, many, many people (including myself) feel that large scale farming of companion animals is unethical. Hundreds of dogs, producing thousands of puppies is, in our opinion, ethical overpopulation. Valid concerns about the welfare of companion animals dictate that large-scale farming is detrimental to their welfare. However, this doesn?t lead to the automatic proof of a general overpopulation of pets.

Sometimes ethical overpopulation is driven by a more insidious belief that pet ownership should be restricted to certain segments of the community. This kind of profiling in any other industry would probably be illegal ? there is no set of societal criteria that determine a person to be ?good? or ?bad?.

Ethical overpopulation can be driven either by valid concern about the welfare of companion animals, or a misguided desire to restrict pet ownership.

Again ethical overpopulation is not about actual numbers. If there were true overpopulation there would be no market for these mass-produced puppies, they wouldn?t sell, and the puppy farmers would go out of business. Sadly that is not the case.

4. Seasonal overpopulation

It makes sense that over the year there will be fluctuations in the number of pets available through retail sources, community sources and shelters.

Seasonal overpopulation describes the fluctuation of pets entering shelters because of regular external events.

For example, most states cats have a breeding season from November to March (depending on location). With hundreds of thousands of semi-tame, undesexed cats living in close proximity to humans, there will be a rush of kittens and mother cats becoming available during these times.

Shelters who don?t make provisions for this influx (offering desexing to community cats pre-breeding season, supplying resources to the community to allow them to hold and tame any found kittens, and generating large numbers of foster homes), will find that they probably do have more cats and kittens than they can reasonably home.

Another time of seasonal overpopulation includes the Easter and Christmas holiday periods, and after fireworks events when spooked pets are collected.

Again, provisions can be made to prepare for the influx periods; taking found pets home rather than impounding them, photographing lost pets and putting their details online, running well-publicised adoption specials up to the date to reduce the existing shelter population and using rescue groups and foster carers to share the load.

While seasonal overpopulation exists, they are generally regular and expected events, often occurring every single year. It isn?t overpopulation in a general sense, but simply times of increased need as seen by many industries (police, hospitals and human shelters).

5. Geographic overpopulation

Examining grassroots populations is important when considering the existence of overpopulation. Geographic overpopulation can be a very real experience of some shelters, thanks to their unique situations. This does not mean the issue of overpopulation is insurmountable, but simply that each community has different challenges.

Geographic overpopulation is most commonly associated with rural areas, but also usually only refers to small numbers of pets. If the market for pets doesn?t exist locally, then it becomes the shelters? responsibility to develop relationships with other shelters and rescue groups to move pets to more populated locations.

• Rural shelters might experience busy periods, with genuinely not enough homes being available in that community. Using more urban rescue groups for support can help move pets into homes in more populated locations.
• Queensland?s kitten season is a nearly all year round occurrence. This puts extra strain on shelter resources in their state. Moving kittens to other states in their off-periods can save many extra lives.
• One shelter might tend to have a large population of black cats, with only a few small-breed dogs coming into care. Another facility might have a lot of white fluffies, but few larger breeds and only tabby cats. Shelters exchanging pets can increase the reach of both shelters, or referring adopters to other facilities can improve the ?hit? rate on adoptions.

Online adoption services like PetRescue can also help reduce the effects of geographical overpopulation by breaking down location as a hurdle to adoption.

6. ?Backfiring-law? overpopulation

Laws which target owners for arbitrary reasons ? those reasons other than cruelty or neglect ? often have the unintended consequence of increasing shelter populations.

Backfiring-law overpopulation occurs when laws are introduced which result directly in more pets entering shelters.

• Pet limit laws see any ?extra? pets needing to be surrendered; people who also keep extra pets in secret ? no matter how loved ? can lose their pets at any time. Pets who have owners who want them entering shelters can hardly be considered a problem of gernal overpopulation.
• Laws which try to manage cats like dogs (compulsory desexing, mandatory microchipping, confinement and licensing), drive cats without owners into the shelter system as they have no one to ensure comply. While well-intended, any proposed benefit in the reduction of owned cats breeding or becoming lost, is nearly always outweighed by a huge (and ongoing) influx of untame and unowned cats into the pound population.
• Breed bans like those who target ?pit bull type? dogs see those dogs killed and never made available for adoption. It can also cause an influx of these dogs to enter shelters (and then to be killed) as owners fall foul of the law. Again this is not generalised overpopulation, but an artificially created influx of pets.

With the current trend towards restricting pet ownership at every opportunity, ?backfiring-law? overpopulation is currently one of the biggest contributors to Australian shelter populations.

Ironically, by either deliberately or unintentionally misusing overpopulation to support certain laws, animal welfare groups can drive for laws which see an increased number of pets entering shelters.

7. ?Super pound? overpopulation

Throughout the nineties and 00?s the trend was for local councils to close their own pounds, and for private charities (RSPCA, Lost Dogs Home), to build large, centralised warehouse-type, facilities and collect multiple council animal management tenders.

A single shelter could take the pound contracts for ten, fifteen or twenty local council areas. Pets could be brought by ranger vans to this centralised location, from an enormous physical area. Single shelters can and do service literally millions of human residents and hundreds of thousands of registered pets.

The results of these changes were unsurprising ? single shelters with enormous intake rates and an artificially created ?super pound? overpopulation.

With no requirement for animal charities to prove they had the ability to reasonably process and rehome the numbers of pets they were contracting themselves to take; ?choosing a few, killing the rest? became the primary tool for population management. Killing was to become the norm.

Why it is important to understand ?overpopulation??

Overpopulation being a valid reason for killing pets is the biggest and most damaging animal welfare fabrication in Australia.

That?s not to say that at times shelters don?t get busy, adoptive homes don?t take effort to find or that there isn?t a Christmas rush ? but that a general, community-to-blame, measurable and currently insurmountable overpopulation simply doesn?t exist.

One of the greatest developments of modern animals welfare, is the ability to discuss and compare our experiences with people locally, nationally and internationally with only the minimum of effort. We know based on the experiences of hundreds of other communities and thousands of shelters, rescue groups and volunteers is that animal population obstacles can be overcome with the right shelter management. As more and more shelters reach out to their communities for support here in Australia too, less and less pets will die.

But eliminating overpopulation as a scapegoat for killing will not happen without outside pressure.

Unfortunately however, the status quo of ?undeniable, indisputable, unexaminable overpopulation? suits the agenda of an underperforming animal welfare industry.

Overpopulation gives cover to shelters who want to continue to kill pets, rather than introduce the programs needed to stop killing. Overpopulation and ?human irresponsibility? forms the basis of the most successful fundraising drives. In short, there is a lot of personal reputation and financial resources dependent on overpopulation being a truth, meaning there is little drive within the industry to examine it further.

It does not serve the pets well because the term overpopulation tends to be used inaccurately and the notion is completely open to misuse. In its current form, overpopulation is not so much an actual measurement of the issues at hand, but a blunt instrument often used to gain enormous latitude in welfare policy without any effort to understand underlying factors.

By understanding where the nuances of the overpopulation argument, we can arrest it as a blanket reason to kill. Overpopulation becomes vital to animal advocates looking to bring about genuine change for pets.

If someone tells you that Australia has pet overpopulation, you now know to ask them; ?tell me by which metric you are determining your belief in overpopulation??

Source: http://www.savingpets.com.au/2012/12/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-%E2%80%98overpopulation%E2%80%99/

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