What is a No-Kill Shelter & how does Pets Lifeline fit into all this?
 

There is no organization or governing body that determines no-kill status.  The definitions come from data reported on a matrix developed in the Asilomar Accords in 2004

A no-kill shelter is an animal shelter that does not kill healthy or treatable animals even when the shelter is full, reserving euthanasia for terminally ill animals or those considered dangerous to public safety. A no-kill shelter uses many strategies to promote shelter animals; to expanding its resources using volunteers, housing and medical protocols; and to work actively to lower the number of homeless animals entering the shelter system. A 90% live release rate is also considered a no-kill shelter.

According to the definition above, Pets Lifeline qualifies as a no-kill shelter with a 99.1% live release rate.   As a private organization, Pets Lifeline accepts all animals based on their mission.  OUR MISSION:  Pets Lifeline is dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of cats and dogs in need in Sonoma Valley through sheltering and adoption, humane education and community programs.

The animal welfare industry as a whole is moving away from the kill vs. no kill terminology.   As an organization, our board and staff  agree with this wholeheartedly and choose to instead focus on how many lives we can save.

Click here for definitions from Maddies Fund, Best Friends, and PETA.

Learn more from leaders in the animal welfare industry and their view of no-kill, euthanasia, & population management here:
 

Maddies Fund

Maddie's Fund defines no-kill as saving both healthy and treatable dogs and cats, with euthanasia reserved only for unhealthy & untreatable animals. Maddie's Fund no longer refers to individual organizations that save all of their healthy and treatable animals as no-kill agencies.

Best Friends

At Best Friends, we don’t believe that no-kill is based on what an individual shelter may or may not do. Rather, no-kill is achieved when an entire community, including all shelters, is saving at least 90 percent of pets in shelters.  

PETA

“No-kill” shelters euthanize animals only under extreme circumstances, if at all. Because of this, they cannot accept all the animals who are in need of help.  Learn more about Peta’s “Ideal Shelter” definition.

What are the Asilomar Accords? 
 

In 2004, industry leaders representing animal organizations gathered to find common ground in an otherwise divided animal welfare field. The result was the Asilomar Accords—a common definition and a standard way of reporting shelter statistics. Since then, many of those same organizations and others put their heads together and created the Basic Data Matrix, which serves as a basis for the minimum data shelters should be collecting and reporting. In 2011, the national organizations began a discussion around how to compile a complete picture of the animals entering and leaving shelters in the United States. The result was the formation of Shelter Animals Count: The National Database, made possible by the founding organizations – ASPCA, Best Friends, The Humane Society, Maddie’s Fund, and PetSmart Charities – who provided the funding to bring this vision forward.

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Asilomar Accords: Saving Lives Not Pointing Fingers

• Working together to save the lives of all healthy and treatable companion animals

• The Asilomar Group established a system of classification to assure consistent data collecting throughout the animal welfare community. They defined terms such as healthy, treatable, and unhealthy and untreatable to ensure that the animal situation under consideration is accurately represented by its statistics. The definitions do not determine an animal’s outcome, only to create a standard for categorizing that will be uniform among all agencies. From there, the group adopted a formula to calculate the “live release rate” for both individual organizations (e.g., shelters) and the larger animal welfare community (e.g., feral cat groups, breed-specific placement groups).
   

Click here for Full Asilomar Accords and Adoptability Guidelines report.