Best Friends Animal Society announced Feb. 6 the No-Kill Los Angeles (NKLA) Initiative has led to a drop in the number of healthy or treatable dogs and cats killed within Los Angeles’s city animal shelters.
Specifically, the NKLA Initiative resulted in a 48 percent drop in shelter deaths since 2012, Best Friends Animal Society stated.
According to a statement released by Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society, about 17,400 healthy and treatable dogs and cats were killed in 2011. Launching the NKLA Initiative in conjunction with the City of Los Angeles, the number of shelter deaths decreased to 13,400 in 2012 and then 9,075 in 2013.
“We’ve reached an incredible lifesaving milestone for shelter pets and animal lovers in Los Angeles,” Best Friends Animal Society co-founder Francis Battista stated. “There’s no doubt we are on the right track to reach a day when animals are no longer killed in LA shelters simply because they don’t have a safe place to call home.”
The NKLA Initiative launched in January 2012. Its mission, according to Best Friends Animal Society, was to end “the killing of healthy and treatable pets in LA shelters by 2017” by relying upon “economically targeted spay/neuter services so fewer animals enter shelters, as well as adoption incentives and promotions to ensure that more animals exit the shelters alive.”
Best Friends Animal Society added about 4 million animals are killed in shelters each year.
