Georgia SPOT (Stopping Pet Overpopulation Together) Society, a nonprofit animal welfare organization has been compiling Atlanta area animal control statistics for over a decade, has released their 2021 statistics for the twenty county metro Atlanta region.
The good news is that half of metro Atlanta’s county animal shelters are considered no-kill in 2021, as defined by sheltering experts as a government animal shelter that must accept seriously sick, injured, and aggressive animals that has an annual Live Release Rate (LRR) of animals at ninety percent or higher. This means that at these shelters less than ten percent of the dogs and cats are euthanized because they have untreatable medical conditions or aggression, die, or are lost while in care and ninety percent or more are adopted, reclaimed by their owners, transferred to a rescue group or have other live outcomes. Statistics were compiled from data provided by the Georgia Department of Agriculture.
At the top of the pack for 2021 is Fayette County Animal Shelter with a LRR of 99%, followed in second place by Bartow County Animal Shelter at a 96% LRR. Other county shelters also considered no-kill for 2021 are Barrow County Animal Control (91%), Coweta County Animal Control (92%), DeKalb County Animal Services (94%), Fulton County Animal Services (92%), Gwinnett County Animal Shelter (93%), Paulding County Animal Control (94%), Rockdale County Animal Control (93%) and Spalding County Animal Shelter (90%). Tailing close behind but not quite no-kill yet are Carroll County Animal Shelter (88%), Cobb County Animal Control (89%), Forsyth County Animal Shelter (88%), and Hall County Animal Shelter (88%).
At the very bottom of the pack in the metro region is Walton County Animal Control, with an extremely high euthanasia rate of 45% and a live release rate of only 55%. This means that almost half of the dogs and cats that enter the Walton County shelter do not leave the shelter alive. Other shelters with very poor dog and cat live release levels are the Cherokee County Animal Shelter with a LRR of only 69% and Henry County Animal Control with a LRR of only 68%.
“A live release rate as low as Walton County’s, Cherokee County’s, and Henry County’s is extremely disheartening in 2021,” says Judy Simon, Director, Georgia SPOT Society. “Georgia SPOT Society congratulates the shelters that have reached no-kill levels and urges animal welfare advocates and pet lovers in counties that have not reached those levels to contact their county commissioners to demand greater county government support through increased budgets, more progressive shelter leadership and practices, increased use of social media, more resources, community cat programs, and other progressive measures because no-kill levels can be attained at all metro county shelters.”
To view Georgia SPOT Society’s complete statistical analysis for 2021, visit:
https://spotsociety.org/shelter-stats/
