Wide Open Spaces: The BIG Challenge in Rural Animal Welfare
During this year's Best Friends National Conference, I presented a session on the challenges of doing Animal Welfare work in rural areas. These issues often get overlooked since only 20% of our population lives in rural areas, yet rural areas cover (depending on your definition) up to 90% of the United States' landmass. Rural communities are perpetually underserved and are essentially data black holes. This means we don't even have a solid grasp of the numbers of animals in need there. Thankfully some movement is happening, and we are seeing an increased focus on rural issues; however, there is a lot of work ahead. Here are some of the slides I shared during the presentation highlighting just how much "space" is in rural areas and how few resources are available to serve those areas.
National Center for Health Statistics
This map shows how much of the United States is classified as "Non-Metro" by the Department of Agriculture. The divisions on the map are individual counties. I could write an entire paper on the various definitions of "rural," but this gives you a good idea of just how much of the country we are talking about.
No matter how you define it, the large majority of our country's landmass is rural. So what does Animal Welfare look like in these areas? Let's zoom in.
Source BFAS
This image includes maps of Arkansas, Texas, and Montana. The counties highlighted were listed as "non-serviced" by Best Friends Animal Society's latest annual data survey. Each red county represents hundreds or thousands of square miles with ZERO available public animal services, and it is half of Montana! While these maps show massive service gaps, they dramatically understate the issue. To illustrate this, let's zoom in again:
Madison County, Arkansas covers 837 square miles and has a population 16,393
Madison County was shown as "serviced" in the previous map because there is a small, private shelter there. However, as far as field services are concerned, only the City of Huntsville offers animal control. They have one part-time officer to cover the city's 5.4 square miles (the yellow spot in the middle) and 2.500 people; animal control does not operate outside the city limits.
This means that 830 square miles and 14,000 people in Madison County have zero animal services coverage. This is a prevalent scenario in rural counties. So, you can see how even more dramatic the no-coverage maps would be if I had the time, talent, and data to reflect the lack of service truly.
There is struggle everywhere, and it is always a challenge when deciding how to allocate resources. We must remember that most of rural America does not have decades of animal services, control, and welfare education to build on. The people in rural America love their pets and need help just like everyone else, but the solutions for Nashville, Arkansas will not be the same as Nashville, Tennessee.
(Canada faces similar challenges, but in some ways on a larger scale).
