More on the Los Angeles animal shelter controversy, which was couched in the success of the animal cruelty task force I blogged about recently (excerpt):
In January, during the mayoral campaign, Villaraigosa promised that he would fire Stuckey. But Tuesday he indicated that Stuckey would keep his job because he has committed himself to reducing the number of animals killed in shelters.I agree that the city should be a leader in Los Angeles animal management, though I don't follow this issue closely enough to know exactly what the best solution is. I did feel that pulling Stuckey out just because you want to appeal to a voting bloc is a bad idea, but I don't necessarily think he's the best guy for the job, either.
"Mr. Stuckey is standing here with us in support of that," the mayor said. "And so, to the extent that our managers understand that ultimately I got elected to move an agenda ahead, and they support that, then we'll go from there."
Some animal rights activists, however, have indicated that they would not be appeased until Stuckey stepped down. Pamelyn Ferdin, a member of the Animal Defense League-Los Angeles board, said Villaraigosa's plan to keep Stuckey and reduce killings did not compute. She called it "a smoke screen and a sham."
Ferdin said Stuckey's plans to cut the number of animals euthanized had been laughable so far. The city, she said, needs someone well-versed in animal management to create a comprehensive plan for increasing adoptions and spay and neuter services. "This is an archaic shelter system that is stuck in the 1950s," Ferdin said. "We need someone progressive to pull this shelter system into the new millennium."
But the situation goes beyond one man. I've blogged before on the complexity of the "no-kill" situation. It's not easy, and it certainly isn't easy to make it happen overnight. With that in mind, this is a serious improvement:
The city euthanized more than 39,000 dogs in the 2001-02 fiscal year, but reduced the number to about 25,000 in the 2004-05 year, according to the Animal Services Department.That's a drop of over a third. Now, that is a number entirely out of context, so I don't know what contributed to that drop (could be a lot of shuffling around and dumping the problem on others, for all I know), but that is still a huge drop over such a short time. I'd like to see the city invest more time and personnel into the problem of over-crowded shelters and to do more to prevent breeders from saturating the market with animals that end up getting euthanized when they're not wanted anymore. Grass roots simply isn't enough, and it's no longer acceptable to just thrust this task on the citizenry.
