With a Single Bill, Albany Lawmakers Could Save Thousands of Cats and Dogs Per Year
The Shelter Animal Rescue Act would require animal control facilities to release companion animals to qualified rescues rather than kill them.
The Scoop New York is a newsletter dedicated to companion animals and the New Yorkers who care for them, from Buffalo to Brooklyn. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were nonetheless exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
With work on the budget wrapped up, state lawmakers will devote the next month to the 10,000 or so individual bills that must be acted on (or not) before June 6, when the session is scheduled to end.
One of those bills – the Shelter Animal Rescue Act – would go a long way toward reducing chronic overcrowding that plagues animal control facilities across the state. It would save the lives of thousands of companion animals a year. And it wouldn’t cost the state a dime.
Simply put, SARA would prohibit New York animal control facilities from killing animals in cases where qualified non-profit rescues offer to save them. Similar legislation has been adopted in states including Delaware and California. In California alone, SARA saves over 85,000 animals every year, according to the California-based No Kill Advocacy Center.
But this common sense solution has its detractors. When SARA was close to adoption in New York in 2022, it was ultimately held up by Binghamton Assembly Member Donna Lupardo, who chairs the Assembly agriculture committee. Bending Lupardo’s ear were some of the same groups that claim to be acting in the best interest of homeless dogs and cats.
At this point I will paraphrase the NKAC’s Nathan Winograd, who wrote the definitive contemporary account of how SARA was, in 2022, smothered in a legislative committee before it could be voted upon.
Essentially, groups including the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States, and the New York State Animal Protection Federation oppose SARA on the grounds that all New York shelters are already no kill (they aren’t); that SARA would cast animal control facilities in a bad light (ignoring the fact that SARA would be unnecessary if these facilities were actually doing their jobs and saving animals, rather than killing them); and that rescues could not be trusted with dangerous dogs (“dangerous” is defined by state law, and dogs that are declared dangerous are not protected by SARA).
“Contrary to popular belief, [anti-SARA organizations] are lobbyists for shelters that kill animals, rather than defenders of the animals those shelters kill,” writes Winograd.
Aside: If you need to be convinced that this kind of crapulence exists in the world – that not just one or two people, but thousands of people, would be so depraved as to literally kill puppies and kittens in order to collect a paycheck, to maintain power over others, or to hobnob with famous people – so did I.
We don’t know yet if state legislators will try to act on SARA in the next 19 or so business days. If they do, New Yorkers will have to speak louder than the lobbyists who are licensed to kill. We already know whom Assembly Member Lupardo will be listening to.