BARCS-TRAVELLING LIGHT YEARS IN A DECADE
Imagine facing the task of reinventing the Baltimore City Animal Shelter, a place where animals got no medical care, no exercise, no love; a facility that brought in 12 thousand animals a year, and euthanized approximately 11 thousand 760 of them. Every year. That’s 98%.
Then imagine turning it into a shelter where over 800 animals are in foster homes, where 400 people regularly volunteer, and where approximately 85% of animals are released to adopting homes, rescues, and other live outcomes.
Today it’s called BARCS, the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, and Executive Director Jen Brause has overseen this dramatic shift. It’s been about 11 years since she assumed the helm of what is now a non-profit operation dedicated to saving animals’ lives.
BARCS sits on Stockholm St., between M and T Bank Stadium and the Horseshoe Casino. If Baltimore City Animal Control finds your missing pet, this is where they take it. BARCS is Baltimore City’s open admission shelter. That means it must accept every animal that comes through the door. Its intake of 11 thousand animals a year is the highest of any shelter in Maryland.
2002 marked the start of Brause’s journey to reform this place. At that time, she was a marine mammal trainer at the Baltimore Aquarium. Learning of the shelter’s high euthanasia rate, she began attending open meetings of an advisory committee. Baltimore initiated steps to turn the shelter into a non-profit operation, and hired Brause to begin making change.
It was a heavy lift. Sometimes the challenges seemed overwhelming. There were moments Brause wanted to quit, but something always stopped her. She tears up when she talks about it.
“I didn’t want to give up because I knew it could be better,” she says. “We needed to save these animals and I didn’t want to walk away from that. And now…to see… so many lives saved every year…is obviously an incredible feeling.”
Coincidentally, this happened at a time of growing calls for shelter reform in cities around the country. That reform movement is ongoing.
BARCS’ success stands as an example of how it can be done, how a high-kill facility can become a modern-day sheltering operation, run by a dedicated team of hard-working and animal-loving people.
Brause has three goals written on a white board in her office:
“Save all healthy and treatable animals
“Increase Spay Neuter”
“Educate and Provide Resources”
Those goals guide every decision made here. Together they sum up Brause’s vision, one that brought this shelter out of darkness. The resulting light can be seen in the faces of the thousands of animals whose lives are now saved here every year.
Watch this short video to meet Jen Brause and hear more about the transformation and ongoing work of BARCS.
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