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From model legislation, to model policies, to ground-breaking studies, to support for activists, to advocacy, to conferences and seminars, to direct assistance, to legal action, the No Kill Advocacy Center is the only national organization working solely to end the systematic killing of animals in U.S. shelters. But we cannot do it without your support. Become a member of the No Kill Advocacy Center today. Together, not only will we save lives; but we will also create a future where every animal will be respected and cherished, and where every individual life will be protected and revered. Donate now by clicking here.

 

Shelter Reform Legislation

To achieve a No Kill nation, we must move beyond a system in which the lives of animals are subject to the discretion and whims of shelter leaders or health department bureaucrats. In a shelter reliant on killing, directors can come and go, the shelter continues killing, local government ignores the ongoing failure, and the public is led to believe that “there is no other way.”

Meanwhile, No Kill is succeeding in communities where individual shelter leaders are committed to it by establishing the programs and services that make it possible. Unfortunately, such leaders are few and far between. When that leader leaves the organization, moreover, the vision can quickly be doomed. For No Kill success to be widespread and long lasting, we must move past the personalities and give shelter animals the rights and protections afforded by law.

Every successful social movement results in legal protections that codify expected policies and provide consequences for future conduct that violates normative values. We need to regulate shelters in the same way we regulate hospitals and other agencies which hold the power over life and death.

The answer lies in passing and enforcing shelter reform legislation that mandates how all shelters must operate. Learn more by clicking here.

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Examples:

Delaware's Companion Animal Protection Act which makes it illegal for shelters to kill animals if there are open cages, animals can be group-housed, if rescue groups are willing to save animals, and more. For a copy of the law, click here.

The California Assembly's Concurrent Resolution 74 which would urge all shelters "to embrace the philosophy of the No Kill movement and implement its programs and services aimed at ending the mass killing of sheltered animals." For a copy ACR 74, click here.

Arizona Senate's legislation to help give animals in shelters a new chance at life. According to the bill's author, he wanted to "create a statewide policy of no-kill animal shelters and county pounds, and prohibit the [killing] of animals that can be adopted into suitable homes." Read our letter to the Senator asking for some common sense amendments to strengthen the law by clicking here.

New York State's Oreo's Law to make it illegal for shelters to kill animals when qualified rescue groups are offering to save them. Read our letter by clicking here.

 

Global No Kill Initiative

Beginning in 2008, the No Kill Advocacy Center began sending hundreds of free copies of Redemption to virtually every rescue group and shelter in Australia, with the assistance of Pet Rescue (petrescue.org.au).

The effort resulted in the first media article addressing the No Kill philosophy and spurred the Animal Welfare League of Queensland, an open admission animal control shelter, to embrace the programs and services of the No Kill Equation. All told, 800 copies of the book were distributed throughout the Australian continent.

On September 30 – October 2, 2009, we participated in a national conference on the Gold Coast of Australia. Bringing together shelter directors, government officials, rescue groups and animal lovers from all over Australia and New Zealand, the No Kill Advocacy Center presented four workshop: Building a No Kill Australia, The No Kill Matrix: What is a Savable Animal?, Developing Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) in the Australian Context, and Reforming Animal Control/Management: A Discussion for CEOs, Managers and Leaders of Pounds & Shelters.

The end result: the head of one of New Zealand’s largest shelters offered a challenge at the conference: New Zealand will be the first No Kill nation. The Australian delegation accepted the challenge. We accepted it for the United States. The race is on.

Read our special report by clicking here.

The Making of a Revolution. Redemption’s impact on the No Kill vs. Killing debate has moved beyond the United States. It is changing hearts and minds in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well. A shelter manager for the Animal Welfare League of Queensland said that before Redemption, they found many reasons to kill an animal. Now, they focus on one reason not to: they are savable. And they are finding that with a little innovation, they are able to save them, as well as find them loving, new homes. Let’s bring the No Kill revolution to all corners of the globe.

New Zealand Picks up the Challenge.The Royal New Zealand SPCA calls for a No Kill nation using the No Kill Equation model of sheltering.

Read their plan for "Saving Lives" by clicking here.

For a copy of their 2009 message to delegates, click here.

 

Invest in Leadership

A survey of animal shelter funding and save rates conducted by the No Kill Advocacy Center finds that if communities want lifesaving success, they should invest in leadership.

One shelter saved 90% of the animals. Another saved only 40%. One community has seen killing rates increase nearly 30%. Another has caused death rates to drop over 50%. There was, however, no correlation between success/failure and per capita spending on animal control. In other words, the difference between those shelters which succeeded and those which failed was not the size of the budget, but the commitment of its leadership.

To read the findings of the study, click here.

 

Transforming Your Community

The first step to building a No Kill community is rebuilding your relationship with the community. And that is done by showing them that you are true to your mission. Two years ago, in January 2007, we did a series of Town Hall-type meetings and surveys to determine how the Washoe County (Reno), NV community felt about its shelter, the Nevada Humane Society.

Those efforts revealed deep dissatisfaction in the community, especially among animal welfare stakeholders (rescue groups, feral cat caretakers, No Kill shelters, and others) with the job being done. The vast majority did not believe the humane society was doing enough to save lives.

Rather than circle the wagons as too many shelters do, the Board of Directors promised the community they would do better, and they idealized that promise by embracing and launching an ambitious No Kill initiative despite a combined intake rate of 16,000 dogs and cats per year; three times the per capita rate of Los Angeles, five times the per capita rate of San Francisco, and over twice the national average. In other words, they didn’t just point the finger of blame at the “irresponsible public,” they said they would save the animals despite whatever irresponsibility existed in the community.

The following two years were marked by significant and substantial efforts in that regard. We assisted the agency by assessing and revamping its operations. A new executive director committed to and passionate about saving lives was hired. The entire management team was replaced. And of nearly seventy employees, only three of the original group was allowed to remain. In short, they got the right people on the bus. And then they took that bus in a whole new direction. That meant launching a series of programs and services in line with the No Kill Equation model of sheltering. And the results have been dramatic.

In just one year, the Washoe County adoption rate increased 53% for dogs and 84% for cats, a higher increase than any other community in the nation. In 2009, 90% of dogs and cats were saved. Not surprisingly, public perception today stands in sharp contrast to what it was. With the help of the Reno Gazette Journal, a community survey revealed that:

•    93% support the No Kill initiative;
•    95% gave the humane society positive ratings on adoption efforts and results; and,
•    93% say NHS has a good or great public image.

Open-ended public comments were overwhelmingly positive and coalesced around two major themes:

•    “We believe NHS does an excellent job for the citizens of Washoe County.”
•    “NHS does a great job of taking care of the animals in its care.”

That success can be every community’s success. And the only thing standing in the way of it is the vision, commitment, and follow-through of its leadership.

Read “How We Did It” by the Nevada Humane Society by clicking here. And make their community’s success, yours.

 

Lawsuits to Protect Animals

An officer at Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control kicks a dog who is inhumanely restrained with a catch pole, a device which wraps a hard wire noose around the dog's neck. Another officer looks on, but does nothing. Note the filthy conditions of the room.

The national No Kill Advocacy Center has filed lawsuits against shelters for:

• Killing healthy and treatable animals before their state mandated holding period expires;
• Misclassifying animals as “ill” or “injured” in order to kill them before their holding period expires even though the animals are not irremediably suffering as required by state law;
• Killing lost animals without making reasonable attempts to find the animals’ owners;
• Failing to provide adequate veterinary care to impounded animals, resulting in animal deaths;
• Failing to provide adequate nutrition, water, shelter and exercise to impounded animals and to treat the animals humanely and kindly;
• Refusing to release animals to rescue groups that are willing to care for the animals until adoptive homes can be found and, instead, kills the animals.
• Retaliateing against animal rescuers and volunteers who publicize its unlawful treatment of animals.

The No Kill Advocacy Center has also filed a lawsuit to protect feral cats condemned by shelters. And more.

If you are an attorney and would like copies of our pleadings, please contact us.

 

Section 1983 to the Rescue

Some officials who oversee shelters are threatening volunteers and rescuers that if they speak publicly about inhumane conditions, they will be banned from volunteering or rescuing animals. But in actually banning or threatening to ban volunteers and rescuers, these officials nationwide are not only holding the animals hostage by threatening to kill them as punishment, they are also violating the civil rights of volunteers.

Recently, Los Angeles rescuers teamed up with the No Kill Advocacy Center to file a lawsuit which alleged that the civil rights of volunteers and rescuers were being violated as retaliation for going public with their observations of inhumane conditions and neglectful treatment at the shelter. The court agreed.

In applying a federal civil rights statute to this area, the court gave animal activists a powerful weapon to reform the nation’s broken animal shelter system. Volunteers and rescuers no longer have to choose between remaining silent about abuses or risk losing their ability to help some animals by volunteering or rescuing them from death row.

Attorney Sheldon Eisenberg, who brought the ground-breaking lawsuit, argues that “Section 1983,” which was enacted as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 “can now help extend the protection of laws to those individuals committed to safeguarding the welfare and rights of the animals entrusted to our care.”

Read Section 1983 to the Rescue by clicking here.

 

Forcing Transparency

Getting records and statistics from public entities is supposed to be easy – we are a nation that prides itself on open government. We are a democracy, and – in theory at least – the people are the government, and have a right of access to all public records. In practice, it’s a little different.

Click here to learn how to force transparency.

 

Saving Lives 2.0

Technology is revolutionizing the No Kill movement.

Click here to learn how to save more lives using simple and free social networks.

 

No Kill Conferences and Seminars

 

"Amazing!"  

"This was the best conference I have ever attended!"

“It was one of the best experiences I've had in animal rescue. To see so many with the same passion that I have which I didn't think was possible - was wonderful.”

 

No Kill Conference 2010 brought hundreds of animal lovers from 39 states and four countries to the George Washington School of Law in Washington D.C. where the most successful shelter directors, animal lawyers, and shelter reformers nationwide shared insights and strategies to end the systematic killing of animals in our nations pounds and shelters. The attendees heard from directors of open admission shelters with save rates between 92% and 96%. They heard from lawyers who have passed laws making it illegal for shelters to kill animals in a wide variety of contexts and who have successfully saved the lives of animals who shelters were determined to kill. And they heard from reformers who have succeeded in passing laws to end the needless killing of animals in their community.

 

• To be notified of future conferences, join our list-serve by clicking here.

• To hear the live conference broadcast from Animal Wise Radio, click here.

• To read Nathan Winograd's keynote and see a video montage set to music, click here

  
  

To download the Shelter Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser: http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Shelter2010.zip

To download the Legal Track materials, cut and paste the following to your browser: http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/Legal2010.zip

 

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