ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

Prime Directive on Trap-Neuter-Return

ANIMAL PEOPLE was instrumental in introducing Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) to the United States, beginning in 1991 with a seven-month trial of the method in northern Fairfield County,
Connecticut.

From the beginning, the goal was to reduce the feral cat population at the target sites to zero as rapidly as possible. There are two preconditions for zeroing out a population of feral animals through TNR, and both were stringently observed:

1) At least 70% of the animals and preferably 100% must be sterilized. Before the 70% figure is reached, there will be no net reduction. ANIMAL PEOPLE made every effort to trap and sterilize
100% of the cats at each site as rapidly as they could be identified; and

2) Sites must be monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure that all newcomers are identified, caught, and sterilized.In addition, ANIMAL PEOPLE stipulates as fundamental humane considerations that all puppies and kittens who can be socialized for adoption should be; that no ill, elderly, or disabled animals should ever be released; and, as the Prime Directive for practicing TNR successfully without rousing politically problematic opposition, no animal should be released into or returned to hostile or otherwise unsuitable habitat.

Hostile habitat is anywhere the animals will be at high risk of being injured or killed (accidentally or deliberately) and most especially places where the community is intolerant of the presence
of homeless dogs and cats, which puts the animals at high risk of being poisoned, beaten, shot, or subject to capture and extermination at the discretion of municipal agencies or other civil authorities. Highly visible habitat, where feeding animals (especially feral cats) may encourage people to abandon their pets, should also be considered unsuitable. Many of the situations in which maintained colonies of
vaccinated and sterilized animals have been subsequently rounded up for extermination by local officials seem to have resulted from disregard of the Prime Directive. The outcome of trying to "save"
animals by keeping them in unsuitable locations is not only an enormous waste of resources (including time and money) but often a net increase in the suffering of the animals as they are forced to
endure capture and surgical sterilization in addition to later extermination by people who may have little or no interest in humane considerations.

ANIMAL PEOPLE does not consider population control killing or culling to be "euthanasia." "Euthanasia" is a term that can only be used properly to mean putting to death hopelessly suffering creatures in order to relieve their misery, although ANIMAL PEOPLE recognizes that some animal welfarists may apply the term "euthanasia" to killing animals by painless means in order to prevent imminent suffering if the animals are in clear and present danger of being subjected to death by means which cause significant pain or mental distress.

What to do with animals for whom shelter space or foster care is not available but who must be removed from particular locations is left up to the intelligence, creativity, and consciences of the rescuers.

However, we believe that killing healthy animals who must be removed from hostile or otherwise inappropriate habitat is seldom the only available option.