6/20/2023 0 Comments Sedgwick county animal rescue team![]() ![]() ![]() Link “The Wichita Beacon” to the original version of the story. ![]() Include the following at the top of the story: This story was originally published by The Wichita Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.Give us credit, ideally in this format: “By Jane Reporter, The Wichita Beacon.”.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Stephen hopes that soon, more people will trust the Wichita Animal Shelter so more animals can be helped. “And importantly, get your animal microchipped and keep that chip updated,” because the shelter relies on scanning those chips to find pet owners. Decreasing the number of animals on the street means fewer animals that the shelter will have to take in. “We need to spay and neuter our animals, keep them on a leash, make sure yards are fixed up,” Stephen said. Stephen says that the shelter will need the community’s help to make sure more animals do not end up on the street. Stephen explains that while there are things to criticize about the animal shelter such as a poor return-to-owner rate for cats - only 2% of cats brought in are returned to owners - the shelter’s euthanasia rate is not one of them. “I don’t want to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, when it comes to understanding what animal services does and helping them with their work.” “My concern is that the public does not understand the progress that has been made,” Stephen said. “The people that work here are great people and when they see those comments, it kind of beats them down.” On Google in the past month, 12 reviews have been left only one review was positive. Though the transfer rate of the shelter to rescues has increased significantly, the reputation of Wichita’s shelter has not improved. This includes contracting with the cities of Clearwater, Derby, Park City, Maize and Valley Center for animal control services such as stray animal pickup and animal cruelty investigations. The Wichita Animal Shelter is run by the city and serves all of Sedgwick County. “There is more of a focus now on saving every animal that is possible,” said Elaine Stephen, a member of the Wichita Animal Services Advisory Board, a citizen oversight board tasked with regulating animal welfare in Wichita. In 2022, the Wichita Animal Shelter euthanized just 233 animals - 3% of the number coming through its doors, a rate that meets the standard of a “no-kill” shelter, which is 10% or less. That earned the shelter a bad reputation as a “high-kill” shelter, a reputation that has not kept pace with reality. That represented 45 percent of animals that came to the facility that year, according to its own records. The Wichita Animal Shelter euthanized 4,476 dogs and cats that year, with a majority of those being cats. In 2012, nearly half the stray cats and dogs picked up by Wichita’s animal control were staring down a death sentence. ![]()
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