For those who don’t know, Fairfield County Council is re-evaluating and changing the animal ordinance in place now. They have appointed a committee to re-write many of the county animal control policies. This process was started in the beginning, to solve the overcrowding situation in the county animal shelter. My hope was that the citizens on the committee would make beneficial changes.
There are citizen organizations spending their own money for animal welfare in our county. They should be commended for their efforts to provide low cost or free neutering services for pet owners.
By far, the biggest financial contributor to animal control and welfare are our tax dollars. Those funds should be spent wisely to address the impacts of unwanted animals to our citizens. It is obvious that the ordinance in place now was put together without common sense. A minority of our citizens were making decisions for the majority. After attending a committee meeting, I was disappointed to see that the new ordinance will probably reflect the same ideology as the old one.
The overcrowding issue has become a primary reason for all the demands from animal rights activists. A refusal to euthanize unclaimed and unwanted dogs and cats is now the driving force behind the overcrowding problem. It seems to be a taboo subject. An inspection of the animal shelter, by one of the committee members, found the vast majority of the dogs were pit bulls or pit bull mix. Twenty years ago, the county took unclaimed and unwanted animals to a veterinarian where they were euthanized.
There was not an overpopulation problem in the shelter. They are a burden on the taxpayer. Why should taxpayers pay for the construction of a larger facility and hire more employees to care for unwanted animals? If we add to the current facility, how long before we have to add again, at taxpayer expense, to feed more pit bulls in perpetuity?
It was brought out at the last committee meeting, that the cat problem was being solved by animal control employees, trapping cats, having them neutered at taxpayer expense and releasing them on private lands. Boundary lines are not understood by cats. This is a tactic well known to animal rights organizations. There are a couple of studies that show it to be ineffective in curbing overpopulation in urban settings.
To see the effects of feral and other cats on song birds and small mammals, just google “cat effects on wildlife.” To put them out in the country, to fend for themselves, is inhumane both to cats and wildlife. Scientific biological research estimates 1.3 to 4 billion songbirds are being killed in the U.S. each and every year by cats (domestic and feral). That’s right, not millions but billions.
Neotropical migrant bird populations are declining. Many factors contribute to this decline and ignorance of wildlife ecology is causing some of it. Small mammals such as mice, rats, squirrels and rabbits, are also killed by cats. These cats are a non-native invasive species introduced by us, the taxpayer. Foxes, bobcats, hawks, and owls, need these prey species. The taxpayers are allowing policies to be implemented without oversite or common sense.
The current ordinance allows viscous dogs to be released to owners after a waiting period. After a Fairfield County woman was attacked and injured in the Greenbriar community by two pit bulls, the owner was allowed to get his dogs back. Our county attorney will tell us that the next incident, when these same dogs kill or maim someone, will cost the county taxpayers millions. The ordinance would be the center piece for the plaintiffs’ attorney. Read the ordinance. It is absurd.
We are a rural county. If development goes unchecked, that may change but right now we have a population with rural values and common sense ways of thinking. Many of our citizens have left the old ways behind to follow after the urban mind set. That way of thinking becomes emotional and heart rending when speaking of animals.
It appears the committee is directly copying the Richland County ordinance on some topics. Do we really want to copy Richland County? For now, the animal rights groups are the minority elite, but they seem to be in the driver’s seat, steering us toward bigger government and more intrusion into our lives.
How is registration and micro chipping of dogs at owners expense going to solve our pit bull problem? “Big brother” is going to force pet owners to register and micro-chip pets? This procedure would be mandatory.
If we allow the minority to rule, they will.
This elite minority wants the county to fund what they want. That is not the solution we need.
This letter is written from the perspective of a wildlife advocate, dog lover and wildlife biologist who served the Department of Natural Resources for 32 years.
