Population Management in Animal Shelters
What is Population Management?
Population management requires intentional and efficient planning for each animal in the shelter’s care. It includes the following:
- Pre-intake planning
- Protocols for care and services
- Ongoing daily evaluation
- Outcome and pathway planning
- Response to changing conditions of the shelter and the animal
Population management aims to eliminate crowding and reduce length of stay to achieve the following goals:
- Enhance physical and mental well-being
- Increase opportunity for positive outcomes
Unless animals are sick or injured and without access to care, the best approach to achieving these goals is to prevent pets from entering the shelter in the first place. A proactive population management strategy starts before animals enter the shelter, through robust Safety Net Programs, including the development of community resources that help pets stay in their homes.
Animal Needs
In order to create a robust and effective population management strategy for shelter animals, we must first understand their needs.
Animals’ needs remain the same regardless of the mission of the organization or the challenges involved in meeting those needs.
The Five Domains offer an evidence-based model for helping us ensure that animals’ needs are met while in our care.
This approach builds on other models, such as the Five Freedoms, by accounting for both negative and positive experiences and combining those measures into an overall assessment of how the animal feels about their life – their affective state – which can give us insight into their overall welfare.
The underlying guiding principle for every population management strategy should be to approach each animal in our care with the goal of minimizing negative experiences and maximizing positive ones.
Population management is accomplished by implementing processes like Pathway Planning and Shelter Rounds, as well as reviewing important metrics like Capacity for Care and Length of Stay.
Last Reviewed November 2023
