An appalled animal advocate has slammed Wagga’s only animal pound for not doing more to increase adoption numbers before placing animals on “kill lists”.
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Passionate animal lover Debbie Johnson has spoken out against Wagga’s Glenfield Park Animal Shelter, saying the shelter did little to promote animal adoption.
“This shelter is apparently state of the art and they do nothing to promote adoption,” she said. “They put up a list of animals to be killed on the website and that’s all.”
“Every animal that comes to the pound should be put on a Facebook page with its details, so either the owner can come collect it, or someone can adopt it.”
According to statistics provided on the council website, 305 cats and dogs were euthanased between 2014 and 2015, a number of almost one a day.
The cost of adopting a female adult dog from the pound is $323, while an adult female cat costs $213. The cost of acquiring a pet that has been impounded for a week would cost an owner $225.
Ms Johnson said these “outrageously high” costs deterred people from adopting and that council should offer subsidised de-sexing programs and free microchipping days, so as to lower the number of animals entering the pound to begin with.
“A reasonable council would say Wagga has a chronic problem with the number of animals going into that pound,” she said.
“If they offered people these kinds of services then these animals wouldn’t be going there and getting killed in the first place.”
The council’s manager of regulatory services Greg Minehan said the council didn’t offer these services as it was “not appropriate to compete with private veterinary practises”.
According to Mr Minehan, the council did everything it could to ensure animals were found new homes as quickly as possible.
“Council works with a large number of animal rescue groups to ensure a large majority of animals are re-homed,” he said. “Animals are released to rescue groups with minimal fees to encourage them to take more impounded animals for re-homing.”