Columbia, SC (WLTX) - A new "No Kill" initiative was introduced here in the midlands by the Charleston Animal Society. The ten point strategy is designed to decrease the number of animals euthanized in South Carolina. Lucy Fuller, the senior director of veterinary care at Charleston Animal Society, says something needed to be done to save these animals.
"If we don’t want to have to euthanize companion animals, we should take responsibility for controlling the population," Lucy Fuller said. "This is taking responsibility."
When cats are found on the street, they are taken to a shelter that will usually only hold them for five days. Then they are typically euthanized. Abigail Kamleiter, the project manager for No Kill South Carolina, says this happens way too often.
"We're euthanizing thousands and thousands and thousands of cats, and there has to be a better way," Kamleiter said.
The Charleston Animal Society has come up with that better way, creating a strategy that addresses different animal related issues. Now, they are sharing this strategy with animal welfare leaders across the state.
"We wanted our first one to talk about cats because that's our biggest issue," Kamleiter said.
"The research that we have done, we being the veterinary community and the animal welfare community," Fuller explains, "shows that the cats are better off in the environment that they came from. If they're living outside, they're meeting their own needs whether they have an owner or not. Keeping them in a shelter is not the best for their health."
Fuller says to help keep cats out of the shelters, they are implementing what they call community cat diversion.
"The idea of community cat diversion is bringing cats in, so we're trapping them," Fuller explains, "we're altering them (spaying or neutering), we're vaccinating them (so they're not transmitting diseases) and then we're returning them to where they were living before."
Kamleiter says this process is better than the alternative.
"When an animal is taken up, spayed, neutered, and then put back out, we’re not euthanizing that animal so that animal gets to live its life," Kamleiter said.
Fuller says this strategy has not come without critiques.
"Some people do have concerns about cats roaming free," Fuller admitted. "One of the most common things that I hear overall is that feral cats are dangerous to wildlife populations. Cats in general, whether they're feral or not, certainly can kill wildlife. The issue is that what we were doing before to control feral cat populations isn’t effective, the population was growing exponentially."
Kamleiter says the population grows as the cats continuously mate with one another.
"The main issue is that they're just reproducing, and we just want to stop them from doing that," Kamleiter said.
Fuller explains that their method actually helps to decrease the feline population.
"It's not that we're putting more cats out, they're already there," Fuller said. "The more animals that are spayed or neutered, the fewer younger animals there are in the population so eventually, we're able to get ahead."
Fuller says that this method has already proven to be successful in Charleston, they just need more people on board. The group plans to keep inviting animal welfare leaders from across the state to these trainings so that shelters have an alternative to euthanasia.