Shelters and organisations that care for abandoned pets are taking immense strain, buckling under the weight of a growing need for their services amid severely reduced resources as they drown in debt.
The Midrand SPCA faces closure.
“It costs our SPCA between R350,000 to R400,000 per month to operate, and we run at a deficit of about R150,000 to R200,000 per month which is no longer sustainable,” Midrand SPCA treasurer Brenda Lucas told TimesLIVE Premium.
“We rely purely on donations to keep our doors open, and we are not a government funded institution. More animals are being surrendered as families struggle to keep afloat, and we have seen an increase in situations where animals are being used for monetary gains and where cruelty cases are on the rise.”
National SPCA spokesperson Jacques Peacock said their main challenges were:
- the impact of fuel price increases on inspections that required field driving;
- the reluctance of trusts and foundations to fund animal welfare due to South Africa’s reputation for corruption;
- staff costs;
- an increased need for assistance, food and vet care, and
- rising numbers of surrendered animals — particularly large breeds that are expensive to feed and more difficult to home.
Peacock said that over the years, funding had dropped 5.7% in 2020; risen slightly post lockdown in 2021; dropped 7.6% in 2022 and was still dropping this year.
The biggest reasons we are seeing in the suburbs is families surrendering their animals because they are emigrating and cannot afford to take them, or they are moving in with other relatives who already have animals or they are moving to complexes where body corporates don’t allow pets.
— Dogtown SA founder Tracy McQuarrie
Dr Chantelle Murray, co-founder and director of Paws R Us and a board member at The Society for Animals in Distress, said: “Shelters are buckling and folding but are often hesitant to lift the lid on the severity of the situation for fear of losing donors. Added to that, when they do ‘speak out’ and appeal for assistance, our broader society is so pressured and fatigued that the response is limited to none.”
Murray, who wrote her thesis on the governance of animal shelters and has conducted national research on donor involvement in the NPO sector, said the difficulty with animal welfare was that because it receives no government or corporate funding, it is solely reliant on the public. In this “individual giving” sphere, an economic crisis for middle-income donors was an outright crisis for animal welfare.
Dogtown SA founder Tracy McQuarrie, working through the BarkingMad network of more than 100 shelters across the country, began researching the situation in 2019, but was disrupted by Covid. Her aim was to work out what assistance shelters needed in terms of governance and running as productively as possible.
The research found that:
- the most significant needs are decent dog food, vet costs and staff
- social media is no longer a helpful tool as everyone is in dire need and there is compassion fatigue;
- shelters are understaffed;
- the cost of living is impacting hard and the influx of animals is huge and non-stop.
Overall, information from the BarkingMad network showed that since the beginning of 2020 every shelter’s income has gone down on average by 20%, while the need for their services has increased by 50%.
“The biggest reasons we see in the suburbs is families surrendering their animals because they are emigrating and cannot afford to take them, or they are moving in with other relatives who already have animals or they are moving to complexes for security or financial reasons where body corporates don’t allow pets,” McQuarrie said.
Cora Bailey, who founded Community Led Animal Welfare (Claw) in 1992 in Durban Deep on Joburg’s West Rand, serves a massive area encompassing townships, informal settlements, zama zama gangs and a large number of foreigners. While they have a policy of not turning any animal in need away, they have had to implement a strict means test as suburban pet owners unable to afford private vets have taken to relying heavily on them too.
“Every day we get calls from people asking us to take their pets. We just tell them they are not the demographic we can serve. But the need for our vet services is huge as families in distress are genuinely unable to afford to feed their animals any more or pay for what their sick or hurt animals need,” Bailey said.
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