Misguided Animal Aid Law

Southern California has the lion’s share of the nation’s animal rights activists, and its affection for animals is perhaps best re-flected in Hollywood. In any movie, legions of humans can die but not, heaven forbid, Babe or Benji. Even off camera, animal actors are granted, by law, a special representative to look after their safety and welfare.

This animal rights culture bears no relation to the city of Los Angeles’ animal shelters, which euthanize nearly three-quarters of the 81,267 animals they take in each year. In an attempt to bring that rate down, animal rights activists helped pass a bill by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) that takes effect in July, requiring better medical care and longer housing of strays. The bill is full of good intentions, but its goals will be all but impossible to implement in Los Angeles. Years of underfunding have left the city’s shelters unable to comply with existing public health and humane treatment laws and far more crowded than they should be under state law. Cities like Pasadena and Santa Monica, with per capita spending on stray and abandoned animals of $7.60 and $6.18, may be able to meet the standards in the Hayden bill, but Los Angeles, with per capita spending of only $2.28, has zero chance of doing so.

The danger is that the bill will compel the animal services department to assign its entire staff to treating strays and then, for lack of space, euthanizing the animals they have so carefully treated.

Champions of the Hayden bill contend that its provision expanding animal shelter hours to weekends and one weeknight will generate enough demand for adoptions. There is, however, simply no evidence that enough demand exists to provide homes for the 59,663 animals the department was forced to euthanize last year. Indeed, the president of Gardena’s Pal Rescue and Adoption told The Times that “every rescue group is on daily overload now” because “there are not enough homes for the dogs and cats that are already here.”

Since city leaders failed to put a bond measure on the November ballot to help raise money to comply with the measure, Mayor Richard Riordan should meet all of the department’s request for a $3.7-million increase in its yearly budget of $8.2 million. In the short term, private donations are urgently needed. The same people who championed the Hayden bill--from the Ark Trust to Actors and Others for Animals--should donate their time and money to help the city live up to their higher standards. With only $5 million and the donation of a multistory facility, for instance, the city could perform necessary renovation and run a recovery and adoption center.

The Humane Assn. recently promised to help the city launch a public education campaign. But most pet owners already know they should spay or neuter their animals and not abandon them to the streets. Acting on that knowledge would eliminate most of the problem.