Latest news with #petneglect
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The dark side of Australia's cost-of-living crisis exposed
A dark side of Australia's cost-of-living crisis has emerged, with the stress of making ends meet linked to a rise in animal cruelty. RSPCA NSW CEO Steve Coleman told Daily Mail Australia that financial pressures facing millions of Aussies were partly responsible for pets being abused or neglected by their stressed owners. It comes as RSPCA NSW announced it would be temporarily closing its online cruelty reporting portal due to the high volume of complaints. 'Whenever things are tough on the economic front it generally results in an increase in cruelty complaints,' Mr Coleman said. 'In the last couple of years it (animal cruelty complaints) has definitely been related to tight budgets on the home front and people not being able to afford their vet bills.' Mr Coleman, who joined the RSPCA in 1991, said the organisation also had to help victims of domestic violence by taking their pets and looking after them while they found safe accommodation. 'The number of people with pets who have become homeless has also increased. A lot of people with pets haven't been able to afford their mortgages,' Mr Coleman said. 'At the core of it, the economy definitely hasn't helped. There are a lot of social challenges at the moment. It's a tough economy.' The Covid pandemic resulted in a huge demand for animal adoptions which left the RSPCA in NSW with empty shelters. Now, close to 70 per cent of households have a pet and many are struggling to look after them. Animal cruelty isn't limited to physical abuse, it also includes failing to take pets in need of medical assistance to a vet, often because of the costs involved. Mr Coleman said there was currently around 800 animals sitting on a 'surrender' wait list, but the RSPCA doesn't have the capacity to take care of them. 'What we say to them is we can't take the animal right now, but what we can do is try and help you maintain your connection with your animal so you don't have to surrender it,' he said. 'That may be that we fund a vet bill for a couple of hundred dollars that they can't afford.' Mr Coleman also said weather also played a role in the amount of animal cruelty cases reported to the RSPCA. 'Typically, if we go back a few years before the economy started to crunch we got more complaints during the summer months,' he said. 'In summer months when feedstocks dry out we'll get more livestock-related complaints around drought-related issues as well.' The RSPCA NSW recently released a statement saying it was temporarily closing its online cruelty reporting portal. 'Like many organisations, we face significant challenges when supporting animals and their guardians, and while enforcing animal welfare laws with limited resources,' it said. 'Due to the high volume of cruelty complaints we are currently receiving, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily close our online cruelty reporting portal. 'This change will help us manage case intake more efficiently by ensuring that our team can effectively triage the animals who need us the most, through reducing lower-priority and duplicate reports. 'Animal cruelty reports can still be made, as they always have been, via our phone hotline, which remains operational and staffed.'
BBC News
01-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
RSPCA issues warning as cruelty cases with multiple pets rise
The number of animal cruelty cases in the South West involving more than one pet from the same household has risen, the RSPCA leaders said they feared the increase was partly due to a growth in pet ownership during the Covid-19 cases between June and August 2024 and the same period in 2023 Devon saw calls rise from 557 to 643 while Cornwall saw a drop from 309 to Bowen, CEO of RSPCA Cornwall, said: "There might be one call that goes in but when the inspector gets there they might be faced with multiple animals that then require removal from that property." She said the charity had seen "a lot of cases of neglect where animals are emaciated"."That seems a bit more common this year than in previous years and we are not really sure of the reasons for that," Ms Bowen one case, a woman from Cornwall was taken to court and banned from keeping animals for five years after the RSPCA prosecuted her for abusing a was caught on camera kicking and punching the court heard it suffered mentally and physically due to the attacks and was also kept in poor pony was removed and has since gone on to find a loving home. The RSPCA said it usually sees a spike in reports over the summer, as longer summer days meant more people were out and likely to witness the charity said it took one call reporting animal cruelty every two minutes its lines were open - averaging 374 reports a a cane corso - a type of mastiff, was found emaciated and neglected in a house in Cornwall with about 20 other dogs and owner was prosecuted and, while all the other dogs and cats have found homes, George is still looking for a foster home or a family wanting to adopt him. While many animals go on to get rehomed relatively quickly, some stay with the RSPCA a cross breed, as been in the RSPCA's care for nearly two was the only dog in the home she came from, so is nervous around other she was "great with people and kids aged 10+", the charity chief inspector Ian Briggs, an expert in cruelty cases, said: "We are seeing a shocking rise in the number of seasonal calls reporting animal cruelty to our emergency said: "Sadly the summer months tend to be when these reports peak. "This year, sadly, we fear the trend will continue and we are busier than ever rescuing animals from many awful situations."
