Demand that the Hawai'i Island Humane Society stop the killing of over 10,000 animals a year

• Did you know that $2.1 million of YOUR Hawaii County ANNUAL tax dollars are given to the Hawaii Island Humane Society for animal control?
• Did you know that more than 10,000 healthy animals are EUTHANIZED annually on Hawai'i Island alone?
• Were you aware that the Hawaii Island Humane Society has won the Hawaii County Animal Control contract for over 25 years and has not changed much in all those years except to increase in tax payer dollars and in euthanasia?
• The contract is managed by the Hawaii County Police Department and funded by the Hawaii County Council with your tax dollars.
• The Hawaii Island Humane Society has won the Hawaii County Animal Control contract for over 25 years. There have not been any significant programs implemented for all those years yet there are many successful programs that cost less and save animals’ lives.
• The Hawaii Island Humane Society (“HIHS”), despite having extensive resources of over $2.1 million taxpayer dollars in revenue annually with a 5% annual increase and CASH assets of $1.3 million in the bank, it continues to be a kill shelter due to the current contract.
• The kill rate on this island is one of the worst in the nation with a total of 73% of animals being needlessly put to death in 2015.
• Don’t be fooled! When implemented according to the successful No-Kill Plans already in operation all over the US, this should SAVE tax payer dollars, not cost more.
• The “SAVE 90%” movement ensures all adoptable and treatable animals are given the opportunity to find a home. Adoptable and treatable animals are being senselessly killed at HIHS because of “space,” despite the extensive financial, volunteer and community resources available to them.
• By committing to a “SAVE 90%” program we can ensure that the lives of many adoptable and treatable animals are saved.

11 Steps to a save 90% shelter system

I. Feral cat TNR
TNR ( Trap-Neuter-Return) programs allow shelters to reduce death rates, are simply less expensive, and have exponential savings in terms of reducing live births.

II. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter
No- and low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter reduces the number of animals entering the shelter system, allowing more resources to be allocated toward saving lives.

III. Rescue Groups
An adoption or transfer to a rescue group frees up scarce cage and kennel space, reduces expenses for feeding, cleaning, and killing, and improves a community’s rate of lifesaving. Because millions of dogs and cats are killed in shelters annually, rare is the circumstance in which a rescue group should be denied an animal.

IV. Foster Care
Volunteer foster care is a low-cost, and often no-cost way of increasing a shelter’s capacity, caring for sick and injured or behaviorally challenged animals, and thus saving more lives.

V. Comprehensive Adoption Programs
Adoptions are vital to an agency’s lifesaving mission. The quantity and quality of shelter adoptions is in shelter management’s hands, making lifesaving a direct function of shelter policies and practice. If shelters better promoted their animals and had adoption programs responsive to community needs, including public access hours for working people, offsite adoptions, adoption incentives, and effective marketing, they could increase the number of homes available and replace killing with adoptions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, shelters can adopt their way out of killing.

VI. Pet Retention
While some surrenders of animals to shelters are unavoidable, others can be prevented—but only if shelters work with people to help them solve their problems. Saving animals requires shelters to develop innovative strategies for keeping people and their companion animals together. And the more a community sees its shelters as a place to turn for advice and assistance, the easier this job will be.

VII. Medical and Behavior Programs
To meet its commitment to a lifesaving guarantee for all savable animals, shelters need to keep animals happy and healthy and keep animals moving efficiently through the system. To do this, shelters must put in place comprehensive vaccination, handling, cleaning, socialization, and care policies before animals get sick and rehabilitative efforts for those who come in sick, injured, unweaned, or traumatized.

VIII. Public Relations/Community Involvement
Increasing adoptions, maximizing donations, recruiting volunteers and partnering with community agencies comes down to increasing the shelter’s public exposure. And that means consistent marketing and public relations. Public relations and marketing are the foundation of a shelter’s activities and success.

IX. Volunteers
Volunteers are a dedicated “army of compassion” and the backbone of a successful No Kill effort. There is never enough staff, never enough dollars to hire more staff, and always more needs than paid human resources. That is where volunteers make the difference between success and failure and, for the animals, life and death.

X. Proactive Redemptions
One of the most overlooked areas for reducing killing in animal control shelters are lost animal reclaims. Shifting from a passive to a more proactive approach has allowed shelters to return a large percentage of lost animals to their families.

XI. A Compassionate Director
The final element of the No Kill Equation is the most important of all, without which all other elements are thwarted—a hard working, compassionate animal control or shelter director not content to continue killing, while regurgitating tired clichés about “public irresponsibility” or hiding behind the myth of “too many animals, not enough homes.”

No Kill is simply not achievable without rigorous implementation of these programs. They provide the only model that ever created No Kill communities. It is up to us in the humane movement to demand them of our local shelters, and no longer to settle for the excuses that shelters often put up in order to avoid implementing them.

• "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi