Letter to the Editor: San Angelo's New Animal Services Policies are a Lethal Step Backward

SAN ANGELO, TX— Jenie Wilson, the Executive Director of Concho Valley PAWS, explains why she is against San Angelo’s new Animal Services polices.

Letter to the Editor:

Over the past decade, Concho Valley PAWS and San Angelo Animal Services have worked together to dramatically increase the lifesaving and well-being of dogs and cats in the community.

Recent policy changes by the city manager are threatening to undo this progress.

The decision to employ a catch-and-kill model under the guise of public safety is ineffective and does not reflect best practices in animal services.

As the director of Concho Valley PAWS, I am deeply concerned about this decision that was made without input from nonprofit partners who support the shelter. The lethal policy allows for the immediate killing of owner-surrendered pets and mandates that stray dogs without collars or microchips can be killed after just 72 hours. This abrupt shift away from effective life-saving policies without any community input is unacceptable.

City officials claim that aggressively impounding stray dogs and killing them will improve public safety. However, there is no evidence supporting the idea that rounding up and killing dogs makes a community safer. In fact, communities that have adopted proactive, humane approaches — such as increasing spay/neuter programs, community-supported pet rehoming efforts, and trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) for community cats — have seen long-term reductions in intake and shelter populations.

San Angelo’s history demonstrates the ineffectiveness of previous approaches. Between 1960 and 2016, the city killed more than 9,000 animals annually, yet this strategy did little to reduce the stray population. Continuing down this path will not yield different results. What has proven effective is collaboration with organizations like Concho Valley PAWS. Over the past decade, their efforts have significantly increased lifesaving outcomes through advocacy for conversation-based adoptions, widespread spay and neuter initiatives, supporting families to keep their pets through counseling and offering robust foster opportunities.

Even more disturbing is that the city manager’s mandated policy will eliminate the shelter’s ability to communicate proactively about pets in need. Previously, the community had the opportunity to step in and save pets before they were killed.

Now, the daily lost-and-found report on Facebook will serve as the only notification, meaning that any dog can be killed at any time with little to no warning or transparency. The residents of San Angelo have so much to be proud of. The past decade has brought tremendous progress in the well-being of homeless pets in our community. We should take a stand against the recent policy changes before the city reverts back to the killing of thousands of pets just because they temporarily are without a home.

This is a great community that I am proud to serve, and we shouldn’t treat public safety and pet lifesaving as an either/or choice. Through partnership and engagement with rescue partners, the community and the advisory board, we can have both. Instead, city officials have chosen to turn back time to decades-old policies and practices that history has already proven ineffective.

—Jenie Wilson, Executive Director of Concho Valley PAWS