Category Archives: Press Releases

No-Kill Hampton Roads invites citizens to learn HOW to reform animal control and save more homeless animal’s lives.

April 10, 2012 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No-Kill Hampton Roads, a group of united local citizens, seeks to end the euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals in Hampton Roads shelters. No-Kill Hampton Roads aims to reform animal control in our area and push for the implementation of the No Kill Equation at our cities’ shelters.

Animal advocates and interested citizens across Hampton Roads are invited to learn HOW.

May 22, 6:30PM
Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library
4100 Virginia Beach Blvd. Va. Beach

The group will be showing “Reforming Animal Control” a dynamic presentation webinar by Ryan Clinton, an attorney and well know animal advocate from Austin Texas.

In this 1.5 hour video, Clinton outlines the steps he took to transform Austin from a high kill, low save rate shelter system to a city that embraced the lifesaving No Kill Equation.

Our communities killed over 15,000 dogs and cats in 2011. No-Kill Hampton Roads wants to see at least 9 out of 10 dogs and cats leave each Hampton Roads shelter alive. This is entirely achievable when citizens insist that those are the results wanted and expected from our tax-payer and donor funded shelters.

 

Local Citizens Unite to Create No-Kill Hampton Roads

Norfolk, March 5th, 2013 Citing the growing national no-kill movement, a group of animal welfare advocates and citizens have joined together to form No-Kill Hampton Roads (www.nokillhr.org). No-Kill Hampton Roads is a coalition seeking to end the euthanasia of healthy, treatable animals in Hampton Roads shelters. The No-Kill equation is a proven, cost-effective method that has successfully ended shelter killing in other cities nationwide. No-Kill Hampton Roads is dedicated to a future where no healthy or treatable animal shall be killed for lack of space or resources. This coalition is open to all Hampton Roads citizens, animal rescue groups and shelters who embrace this mission.

Achieving No-Kill status occurs when there is a 90% or more live release rate for all sheltered animals. Many jurisdictions in Virginia have already achieved such success or are well on their way. For example, The Charlottesville SPCA (CASPCA) and Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS) are open-admission shelters and serve as their respective community’s animal control or “pound”. In 2011, CASPCA had a 93% live release rate with LHS at 90%. While in contrast, the total live release rate at Suffolk Animal Control was less than 47%.

Since the boundaries of Hampton Roads cities are blurry, No-Kill Hampton Roads believes that each shelter must embrace the proven life saving strategies of the No-Kill Equation in order to give the animals in all of our cities the same chance at life.

Naysayers of No-Kill suggest that there are not enough homes or that No-Kill shelters warehouse animals but those myths are quickly being debunked. Study after study reports that a shortage of homes is not the problem; rather it is inadequate outreach to the public to raise awareness about shelter pets, most of whom are loving, adoptable animals. And one only has to visit CASPCA or LHS to see how well cared for sheltered animals are in a No-Kill facility.

A recent Associated Press poll reported that 71% of pet owners feel that shelters should only be allowed to euthanize animals when they are too sick to be treated or too aggressive to be adopted. No-Kill Hampton Roads believes that our citizens are extremely compassionate and if done locally, that percentage would be even higher. No-Kill Hampton Roads hopes the region will unite in this cause and citizens will demand that each and every shelter in Hampton Roads commits to life saving.

For more information and to join No-Kill Hampton Roads, visit www.nokillhr.org.