For many months now the City of Truth or Consequences has been working on refining and updating its animal control ordinance that will become part of city code.
Spearheading the ordinance change is Animal Control Officer Tyler Knull. He has done an excellent job in comparing other cities’ animal control ordinances and consulting with Ledy VanKavage, senior legislative attorney for the Best Friends Animal Society. The result is a very thorough and thoughtful and humane piece of legislation.
The biggest change is incorporating a “community cat” approach to the city’s stray cat population. The first drafts of the code and the current code punished people who feed and care for stray cats, making them “owners” with all the vaccination, private property damage, local wildlife depredation and population-control responsibilities of any stray they fed for 14 days.
VanKavage brought research and statistics to bear that show city animal shelters pay–and therefore the people pay–a lot more if it has a “trap and kill” approach to controlling the stray cat population. And it is not nearly as effective as a “trap-neuter-return” program, research bears out: https://bestfriends.org/network/resources-tools/people-pets-and-policies
The TNR method encourages city cooperation with community catcare people and animal rescue and care organizations that fundraise and give discounts and support to community catcare people. The city lets them pay for the strays’ food, sterilization, vaccination and vet bills, which results in significant cost savings, better stray-cat control and less turnover in city animal-shelter staff whose humanity can’t bear the heartache of trap-and-kill shelters.
Under City Manager Gary Whitehead’s leadership in transparency and community outreach, workshops on community issues, such as this new animal control ordinance, are being held.
Animal lovers, please read the new ordinance: https://www.torcnm.gov/your_government/animal_ordinance_information/index.php
Then attend the workshop, 5:30 pm, Wednesday, Dec. 10, at city commission chambers, 405 W. 3rd St.
If you agree or disagree with the ordinance changes, let city leaders and your fellow citizens know where you stand on instituting community-supported animal sheltering.
All I have to say is:
A feral cat kills around 23 to 46 birds and 129 to 338 small mammals each year, while owned outdoor cats kill fewer but still many (e.g., 1-34 birds/year), contributing to billions of total deaths in the U.S. alone for both birds and mammals, making them a leading threat to wildlife alongside habitat loss.
• In the U.S., all outdoor cats (owned and feral) are estimated to kill 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.9 to 20.7 billion small mammals annually, making them a major driver of wildlife mortality, according to a landmark 2013 study in Nature Communications.