PROGRAMS

ANIMAL SHELTERING

Since 1973, the St Croix Animal Welfare Center has been the only physical animal shelter on the island of St Croix. In the last decade, our organization has made huge strides in animal sheltering practices, in tandem with national animal sheltering trends. Our live release rate has increased from 20% in 2012, to over 80% currently. This amazing progress has been made despite us remaining open-admission and experiencing the destruction of our old facility at Clifton Hill.

But there is always room for improvement. We are constantly striving to increase our lifesaving rate and comitted to following best practices in animal sheltering. 

WHAT WE DO: 

• Serve as the only open-admission animal shelter on St Croix. We never turn an animal in need away. 

• Animal shelters are a very stressful environment. We want to avoid animals entering the shelter system unless absolutely necessary. Our surrender intervention strategies include: medical, behavioral, food and financial assistance. 

• We aim to place animals in foster homes as much as possible, expecially our most vulnerable neonates and medically fragile animals.

• Our ultimate goal is to find as many animals suitable homes as possible, whether on St. Croix or on the mainland. 

• We do not adopt out feral or agressive animals. 

• We support community cat programs by robust TNVR (Trap, Neuter/Spay, Vaccinate, Return). 

• All our programs aim to abide by Best Practices in Animal Sheltering and adhere to the highest of humane standards for our animals. 

We are working closely with Maddie’s Fund to help develop and progress our policies in line with national standards in animal sheltering.