They were: 

If we achieved these goals, we believed that we would not only see a reduction in the number of animals that needed us in the first place, but also a rehoming rate of 90 percent or more for the first time ever across all species. To elaborate on how difficult this is to achieve, last year we barely missed the 90 percent rate as we unfortunately had some fish die that had been brought in by our inspectors.  

Yes, the life of a fish counts as much as a life of a dog in our books!

While the financial year is not quite finished yet, I wanted to share the preliminary results with you. In line with our first goal, in 2017-18 we are projecting a year on year decrease of 30 percent across all animals. Felines showed the most significant change for non-inspector seized species with a projected drop of 21 percent for cats and 25 percent of kittens on the back of our “Frisky Tom” desexing campaign.  

Furthermore, we also saw a significant drop in the number of inspector-seized animals, especially for birds, poultry, rabbits and fish, where we haven’t seen the large hoarding cases as we have seen in previous years.   

Other animals via the inspectors have also decreased as we have deliberately reviewed our protocols, the legislation and previous animal outcomes, to give more owners a chance to rectify issues before a seizure is made.  

Seized animals, particularly dogs, may stay with us for years and still may be hard to rehome afterwards if there are serious behavioural issues. If we can achieve a better outcome for that animal without putting them through that process, then it’s a win for that dog, and we have more kennel space for others. 

All of these changes have resulted in a reduction of around 1,000 incoming domestic animals this year alone. If we look back at the last three years since we started this strategic plan, the reduction of incoming animals has been dramatic.  

For domestic animals, we have seen almost a 40 percent reduction, and for wildlife there has been even more significant reduction of 76 percent as we have partnered with ACT Wildlife to provide more specialised care for our natives.

This significant decrease in incoming animals has allowed us to provide more specialised and focussed care on each animal that enters the shelter, especially those with higher needs – hence keeping them healthier both mentally and physically, which has reduced the number of animals requiring euthanasia.

Still, this sudden decrease in animals has not reduced our corresponding costs fast enough yet. We made these goals knowing it was the right thing to do for animal welfare despite this known risk.  

Unfortunately, this does mean that RSPCA ACT is becoming more and more dependent on donations and bequests to keep our operations going, especially when the lack of vets resulted in the closure of our public vet clinic in 2017.

If you would like to make an end of year donation to RSPCA ACT to help us continue to prevent cruelty to animals both now and into the future, please visit our website at https://www.rspca-act.org.au/donate.