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Auckland Council staff are investigating expanding Council’s three animal shelters, including the one in Silverdale, as they are all at capacity.
At the Governing Body meeting on August 24, regulatory services director Craig Hobbs said there has been an explosion in dog numbers.
“There are 130,000 known dogs out there at the moment – ie those that have come through our system – but we believe, anecdotally, that there’s probably twice that number in Auckland that we don’t know about,” Hobbs said.
He said over the Covid-19 lockdowns there was no desexing so there was an explosion of puppies and many Aucklanders had taken on dogs while they were working from home.
“They [owners] had the time and capacity to put into them. They are now back at work and those dogs are being left to their own devices.”
Cr Daniel Newman asked if council needed to expand the animal shelters they currently have, particularly council’s Manukau animal shelter.
He said the Manukau shelter is completely full and he did not know how council was keeping up with the number of animals coming into the shelter.
“We are euthanising about 3000 dogs a year out there [in Manukau] now. I have been out there, it is like a prison,” Cr Newman said.
Hobbs said that council is at capacity in all three of its shelters – Silverdale, Manukau and Henderson – and the euthanasia figures were “sad but accurate”.
“We are actually returning animals, as soon as we pick them up, directly to their homes because we can’t accommodate them at the shelters,” he said.
“The shelters are not there as a ‘doggy daycare’. They are an [ambulance at the] bottom of the cliff intervention and therefore the conditions aren’t great for animals.”
Hobbs said staff are investigating expanding all three of the animal shelters but it would require capital expenditure that would need to be considered in the council’s long term plan (budget).
“We lease an animal shelter in Pukekohe to Waikato District Council. We are looking to potentially bring that back to increase our capacity,” he said.
In October last year, Hibiscus Matters reported that Silverdale’s animal shelter was overflowing with puppies and dogs that needed to be re-homed, following a spike in numbers resulting in part from Covid-19 lockdowns.
