An Evening with Nathan Winograd

On February 1, Rescue Network’s 10th Annual Chat Week invited Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America to discuss his views with the animal welfare community.

Nathan Winograd espouses and promotes the no-kill philosophy based on a growing number of successes across the U.S.

In Tompkins County, the death rate was reduced by 75 percent, and they were able to cut expenses in the process. When Winograd inherited that shelter, it had a $124,000 annual deficit. By the time they had finished reducing the death rate to only 7 percent of all impounded animals, they finished the year with a $23,000 surplus.

In Philadelphia, they went from an 88 percent killing rate to 61 percent save rate without a single dollar increase in their animal control budget. In Washoe County, they have actually been able to reduce the deficit at the same time they are reducing killing by over 50 percent.

The reason for that is that most of the programs of the No Kill Equation are more cost-effective than programs to impound and kill animals. For example, it is cheaper to neuter and release a feral cat to a volunteer caretaker than it is to impound that cat, hold that cat for the stray period, and kill that cat and dispose of the body. And the savings for neutering that cat are exponential, because of the savings of not having to care for the offspring that are never born.

The other no-kill programs are no different. Volunteers do a lot of the work of lifesaving in communities that have embraced the no-kill philosophy. Adoptions bring in revenue, while killing, while disposing of bodies costs money. At the end of the day, shelters can reduce the number of animals that are killed, and actually run a more cost-effective operation.

But it’s an effort to overcome the old-school animal control politics.

Just go read the chat transcript.

More about the No Kill Revolution at Nathan’s blog

See more folk art from Nick Herrera. That’s his Dogcatchers piece above.