If your shelter relies on animal transport to save lives or you care about transport, we need you to join us in an urgent strategy session to protect our shared lifelines. Texas is currently the epicenter of a crisis involving the New World Screwworm (NWS), and it is creating a ripple effect that threatens transport across the country.

Right now, Texas shelters are struggling with new, strict rules that make it incredibly hard to move animals out of infested zones safely and in a timely manner. Florida and Pennsylvania have already banned TX shelter pets, and it is highly likely that surrounding states, especially those near the Mexican border, CA, AZ, NM and along our major transport routes will also be affected if this keeps spreading. This isn’t just a local Texas problem. Our biggest concern is that since transport is used as a major lifesaving strategy for shelters that don’t have enough resources to adopt locally, it will set our industry way back. We are working to better understand how many animals this will impact in Texas alone if the transports stop, but as you can imagine, it is a lot.

We need everyone to get in front of state officials immediately to show them our safety plans and prove we can move animals safely, rather than letting them react with total shutdowns. We all need to be a part of that.

We are holding an urgent meeting to share exactly how we are handling this in Austin, the steps we are taking in the hopes that will help you. And we want to hear what others are doing and discuss a plan to get in front of the officials.

WEBSITE LINK: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/bno913ipRQKV4iX0LkwLAA#/registration