The SPA is raising an alarm cry. "It's a call for help and common sense," explains Jacques-Charles Fombonne, volunteer president of the SPA, to 20 Minutes . This Monday, on FranceInfo , he detailed the extremely tense situation in shelters in France. Faced with hundreds of calls from people ready to adopt animals and the government's silence, he returns for 20 minutes to the current dead end, to the risk of euthanasia of thousands of animals by the pound and the situation in Ile- de-France which has six shelters.
How do you manage the unprecedented and extremely tense situation in the SPA shelters?
In the 53 shelters across the country, we had 4,300 animals at the start of confinement. We are today at 5.600 and we have 7.000 places. Usually, we collect 3,600 animals every month and we give the same for adoption. There, we are quite simply in the situation of a tank which fills with the reception of abandoned, lost or stray animals, coming from the pound. But if there are no more places, because no animal leaves, and no one to take them, the regulation for these structures is euthanasia.
Is it the same situation in the six Ile-de-France shelters?
We are at 90% of our capacity. We have 1,400 places left in France and 300 for Ile-de-France shelters. We are quickly coming to the end of the exercise. We can't push the walls, cram the animals. We will try to find places with breeders, boarding houses, to place some animals in host families but at some point we will have to tell the pound that we can no longer take them. And it will automatically be euthanasia. The pounds have agreed to keep the animals a little longer, but when we reach our maximum capacity, in about ten days, the pounds will go to sleep.
What is the solution to avoid arriving at such a euthanasia situation?
For the past ten days, we have been trying to get an exemption from the government to allow people to come and adopt in shelters. Wallonia has done that. We, the Department of Agriculture told us that it was complicated because it would require an interdepartmental order. We also contacted the prefects in the departments where we have shelters. We were told to do with the department. In short, we bite our tails. For our part, the procedure is ready: we are proposing to the ministry that people choose the animal on the Internet, that they make an individual appointment to be alone on site in the refuge. They are presented with the animal from a distance and they leave with it. But we come to wonder if the state does not abandon animals a second time. If the government does nothing, thousands of animals will be euthanized.
You were very worried about the risk of an increase in dropouts at the start of confinement… What about?
Yes, we were scared, especially since some morons had fun saying that animals could transmit the disease. We know it is not. In any case, we have no increase in dropouts. We are really happy on this point. In fact, we are in this silly situation where there are thousands of animals to adopt and we receive hundreds of calls a day from people who are ready to do so. But it simply lacks a stamp for the administration to authorize via the displacement certificate, to come and adopt. The animal, for people alone at home, is a real anxiolytic.
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