If you visit animal shelters around the country, you’ll find a broad range of sheltering facilities. There are no national standards for animal shelters, so some have modern-day operations and save most of the animals in their care.
Others are stuck in an old paradigm, forgoing modern strategies. They euthanize many or most of their animals.
As late as 2006, the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) was in the latter category, euthanizing about 98 percent of the 12,000 animals that came into the shelter every year!
When Jen Brause took over as BARCS executive director that year, she was determined to turn things around. She began new efforts to encourage adoption, implemented foster and volunteer programs, and began extensive coordination with rescue groups.
Euthanasia rates went down and live release rates (the number of animals that leave the shelter alive), went up. Last year BARCS had a live release rate of 86 percent. What a turnaround!
But good is not enough for Brause. Her search for new ways to save more lives continues.
In the last months, BARCS has embraced three new ways to further increase its live release rate.
- Mega Adoption Events
BARCS teams up with other shelters in our area for big off-site adoption events.
- Managed Intake
BARCS is Baltimore’s open admission shelter. Unlike private shelters, it must accept every animal brought in by citizens or Animal Control.
People used to line up outside every day to surrender animals, but that is changing. BARCS now encourages people to make appointments to surrender a pet.
This helps reduce the need for euthanasia to make space, because BARCS can ensure there’s an available cage for the animal when it arrives.
And sometimes the shelter is able to avoid the surrender entirely by helping pet owners find needed resources, like pet food or reduced cost veterinary care.
- Trap Neuter Return (TNR) of community cats
Did you know there are tens of millions of free-roaming cats in this country?
Some of these cats are feral. Others are abandoned domestic cats. They reproduce quickly and are a problem everywhere. Baltimore is no exception.
TNR is a humane method for reducing these huge numbers. It involves trapping the cats, spaying or neutering them, vaccinating them, and returning them to the communities from which they came.
TNR is not new to BARCS, but it has entered a new phase.
Several years ago, a grant paid for a three-year TNR program at BARCS. The goal was to TNR
3,000 cats a year for three years.
With that grant finished, BARCS applied for and received a new grant to continue the program, and is seeing real results.
Watch this short video to learn more about these programs and how they’re helping BARCS save the lives of homeless animals.
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