How weather disasters strain animal shelters » Yale Climate Connections

Transcript:

When extreme weather hits, pet shelters may struggle to care for the dogs and cats in their facilities.

For example, when Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall …

Neff: “Most of the facilities had no water, no power.”

Mark Neff is president and CEO of the Forsyth Humane Society in Winston-Salem, North Carolina – which is outside the region that was hardest hit.

To help, his group collected donations of food, water, and supplies. They then partnered with the Bissell Pet Foundation and others to send those supplies by plane to areas in need and to evacuate shelter pets back to their own facility and others across the state.

Neff: “So throughout this process, almost 800 animals have been moved out of western North Carolina.”

Neff says the animals suffered enormous stress during the event, but most are recovering.
They’re unlikely to return to the communities they came from. As shelters reopened after the storm, many filled up with new animals whose owners were no longer able to care for them because of the disaster.

So shelters even far away from the site of the storm are housing a larger number of cats and dogs.

And as climate change causes more extreme weather, the burden on rescue organizations – and the need for people to adopt pets – is likely to grow.

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media