The City of San Angelo determined one feral cat colony warranted action. For the last week Animal Control Officers intimidated a citizen volunteer for doing their part to reduce our community's feral cat problem. Below is the memo officers distributed.
The City has a new strategy underway, however it's not clear why or exactly what they wish to accomplish. The most recent minutes suggest the city wants to approve feral cat colonies operated by area animal organizations and hold these organizations to local ordinances, many of which make no sense for feral cats.
It's been years since any local animal organization had anything official to do with feral cat colonies. A number of citizens kept up their colonies or started new ones, despite the loss of grant funding.
For the city to achieve their objective, they'd need to partner with local animal organizations. Their heavy handed approach this past week portends a less than collaborative relationship. Who'd want to step up for that?
2 comments:
Angelo State president, Dr. Brian May, should be congratulated for his support of the successful feral cat program at ASU. After years of trap and kill, trap and kill, someone finally had the courage to say, “This isn’t working.” As a result, the campus cat population has declined and is now stabilizing, the animals are healthy and cared for, and it’s all being done by a group of dedicated volunteers spending zero tax dollars. The city of San Angelo could learn a lot from Dr. May’s willingness to apply new solutions to old problems. It’s called leadership, and I’m sure the city would be quite surprised by the results if Animal Control abandoned their current heavy-handed approach and instead worked WITH the willing volunteers already in place. San Angelo can do so much better than, “We’ve always done it this way.”
Glad to hear about ASU's successful (so far) program. Hope they continue it.
One point I find interesting is that the meeting of the ASAB that seems to be part of the current program was back in February, and they only published the minutes today at 9:16am. What happened to all the meetings since? All canceled? Then why no notices posted. Why weren't the February minutes posted till today?
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