[Kern County] Animal kill rates drop, but not as far as reports seem to show

Sometimes data can be confusing.

So when the Kern County Grand Jury released a report on the Kern County Animal Services Department Monday that offered up three years of county euthansia stats, people might be forgiven if they thought there had been a 52.5 percent drop in the number of animals euthanized.

The numbers are, generally, accurate. But they are also drastically misleading. Context is everything when dealing with data.

The Grand Jury used a total 2013 county euthanasia number — 14,825 — that included nine months of animals killed on behalf of the city of Bakersfield, which was paying the county to shelter their share of the community’s abandoned and unwanted animals until the end of September of that year.

Then, in October, the county and the city split their operations.

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Kern County euthanasia numbers reported by the Grand Jury for 2014 — 7,037 — and estimated kill numbers for 2015 — 6,133— did not include the city numbers.

You can’t compare a year with combined city/county numbers to a year with only county numbers and get an accurate representation of how euthanasia in this community is trending.

The Californian, which has done detailed, data-driven reporting on the communities’ struggle to kill fewer unwanted dogs and cars for more than a decade, analyzed kill trends in August.

The reporting found that in the first six months of 2012 — the last full year of joint city/county shelter operations — the county and city handled 15,571 animals in the shelter and euthanized 9,189 of them.

In the first six months of 2015 the city and the county, when the two jurisdiction’s numbers were combined, handled 13,034 animals and euthanized 6,470 of them.

That’s a respectable 29.6 percent drop in euthanizations. But it’s not a 52.5 percent drop.

Kern County definitely seems to be heading in the right direction when it comes to animal euthanasia. But things aren’t as good — yet — as this week’s grand jury report makes it seem.

And a lot of the credit for the trend belongs with the private, non-profit animal welfare community.

Lowering euthanasia in the long term means the community needs to lower the number of animals the city and county shelters take in.

Euthanasia is driven by high volumes of animals going into shelters from the street and from the public who can’t or won’t care for them.

Cutting that flow of animals has been proven, in a number of counties, to reduce euthanasia.

Low cost spay and neuter services, which make sure unwanted litters of pets are never born, have been shown as the best way to reduce shelter intake.

In the past few years Bakersfield and Kern County have stepped up their spay-neuter game.

Much of that is due to Critters Without Litters, a nonprofit spay-neuter clinic that has been open for just a few years.

Critters Executive Director Vicky Thrasher reported the non-profit altered 6,491 animals in 2013 and in 2014 it altered 9,973 animals.

The county of Kern has chipped in by launching a $250,000 annual low-cost spay neuter program that has largely targeted high animal intake areas in east Bakersfield and Oildale to try and reduce the unwanted pet population there.

Those efforts are paying off.

But killing hasn’t dropped by 50 percent yet.

December 1, 2015

The Bakersfield Californian

By James Burger