The Business of a Never-Ending Crisis

Why the Pet Overpopulation Crisis Has Become Too Profitable to Solve

This white paper is intended for animal welfare professionals, policymakers, advocates, funders, and donors seeking to move beyond perpetual crisis toward lasting solutions.

On any given morning, a shelter lobby buzzes with familiar chaos: “Rescue needed—overcrowded again.” Photos hit social media, criticisms surge, volunteers scramble, headlines lament the flood of homeless pets. It feels inevitable. Almost natural. The result isn’t just crowded kennels. It’s wasted taxpayer dollars, burned-out staff, and communities stuck in a deluge that feels impossible to escape.

But what if this isn’t a failure? What if it’s a predictable outcome of how the system is designed?

“Never, ever, think about anything else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives,” advised Charlie Munger, whose career was a master class in incentive design. “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcomes.” The line may come from finance, but it travels well into animal welfare, where incentives explain why overcrowding persists even when we know how to prevent it.

The Iron Mountain Parallel: How Animal Shelters Mirror Crisis-Driven Systems

In 1967, the Report from Iron Mountain scandalized readers by arguing that peace would destabilize institutions built around war. The author later revealed it as satire, but the critique stuck because it captured something true about bureaucracies: when survival depends on a problem, that problem must persist.

Sound familiar?

Today’s shelter system follows the same script. Overcrowding, urgent pleas, and starved spay/neuter programs aren’t glitches; they are the expected outcomes of incentives that reward crisis over prevention.

The “pet overpopulation crisis” is not just an unfortunate reality—it has become the engine of a profitable business model. The very organizations built to solve the problem now depend on its continuation.

When organizational survival depends on crisis, solutions are treated as threats. Animal welfare’s “Iron Mountain” is the crisis dividend: prevention would destabilize the very institutions built to profit from overcrowding.

The Animal Welfare Iron Mountain: Why Pet Overpopulation Persists

Animal welfare faces its own Iron Mountain paradox: if prevention truly succeeded, it would destabilize the very institutions that now rely on crisis for relevance and revenue.

In our field, the “war” is pet overpopulation. “Peace” would be widespread, affordable spay/neuter that cuts off the supply of unwanted litters before they ever reach shelters. From 1990 to 2010, investment in prevention delivered historic results. Accessible spay/neuter fueled the steepest drop in shelter killing in U.S. history, annual euthanasia fell from roughly 20 million animals to about 2.7 million.

The City of Los Angeles provides a striking example. In 1971 Los Angeles Animal Services killed 110,835 dogs and cats, the worst year of killing in the city’s history. That grim toll triggered an awakening among civic leaders and made Los Angeles the first municipality in the nation to fund spay/neuter for resident pet owners. Over the next three decades, the results were dramatic: by 2007, euthanasia had dropped to 15,009 animals, an 86% reduction. Prevention, broadly applied, had worked.

Yet by 2008, euthanasia rose again by 30%, a warning sign that broad-based funding, while initially effective, wasn't enough. As I argued in a 2010 strategic plan for L.A., the city had hit what I called “the wall.” Breaking through required not just more surgeries, but strategically concentrated, high-volume spay/neuter in the very neighborhoods driving intake: the underserved, high-risk communities where the flood was still pouring in.

Munger’s Lens: Why Shelters Stay in Crisis Mode

If Iron Mountain revealed the mindset, Munger’s principle explains the mechanism: outcomes follow incentives with unflinching predictability.

Incentives in the modern shelter system reward:

• Perpetual urgency: Packed kennels and dramatic rescues stir emotions and donations far more than the quiet success of prevention.

• Institutional centrality: National players like BFAS elevate their profile by casting themselves as the indispensable generals in a never-ending “war” against shelter killing. If the war ends, so does their primacy.

• Fundraising momentum: Dollars flow when victories feel hard-won against impossible odds. Without drama, the pipeline dries up.

In this light, overcrowding isn’t failure. It’s the expected outcome of a system that rewards crisis. Success is no longer measured by fewer animals entering shelters, but by a steady stream of photo-friendly rescues. And because revenue depends on crisis, the crisis can never end.

The Weakened Dam: How Ignoring Spay/Neuter Fuels Shelter Overcrowding

Imagine a shelter beside a river that floods every spring. When the waters rise, staff wade in to save animals. They’re hailed as heroes, garnering awards, grants, and headlines. But year after year, no one repairs the upstream dam. That’s not the fault of the rescuers; it’s the design of those in boardrooms, who depend on the flood to keep donations flowing and bottom lines intact. Without the flood, there would be no dramatic rescues, no applause, and fewer reasons to raise money.

This is the difference between downstream reaction and upstream prevention. Downstream, frontline staff and volunteers keep pulling animals from the flood: rescue, adoption, transport. Upstream, leadership decisions determine whether the dam is repaired through universal spay/neuter and accessible care that stop the flood before it begins.

Universal, affordable spay/neuter is that dam. After decades of proven success, it was quietly sidelined not by those in the shelters, but by national foundations and boardrooms that shifted priorities away from prevention. In today’s incentive structure, spay/neuter is not a solution. It’s an existential threat to institutions that rely on the flood to justify their relevance and revenue.

By 2023, the result was a nationwide shortfall of 3.7-million spay/neuter surgeries. That was enough to erase decades of progress and lock communities into a cycle of endless, crisis-driven appeals.

Packed kennels aren’t a failure—they’re the predictable outcome of incentives that reward crisis over prevention. Change the incentives, and you change the results.

Case Studies: Los Angeles vs. New Hampshire

Los Angeles: Abandoning Prevention for Optics

In 2008, after decades of prevention gains, Los Angeles partnered with Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS). By 2011, BFAS secured a highly favorable deal: management of the city-owned Northeast Valley Shelter in Mission Hills for just one dollar a year. Promising to bring their “Save Them All” mission to life locally, BFAS pledged to reduce euthanasia and boost adoptions.

But the reality was different. Despite millions invested, intake remained high, and the city’s prevention capacity eroded. High-risk adoptions led to lawsuits, including one involving a pit bull named Bleu who mauled a young girl, raising serious questions about BFAS’s management practices.

In 2020, BFAS declared Los Angeles a “no-kill city.” By 2024, shelter killing had surged 72%: a marketing triumph for BFAS, but a policy failure for the city. Compassionate staff, shackled by structure rather than will, were left to carry out the casualties.

Los Angeles thus stands as both proof and warning: proof that prevention works, and warning that when incentives reward crisis, even the strongest gains can be squandered. By missing the opportunity to implement a second generation of prevention (data-driven, neighborhood-focused spay/neuter) the city poured resources into optics over strategy, and the crisis narrative rolled on. And tragically, the City Council recently voted to double down on this failed approach, as detailed in Lives Lost to Political Theater.

New Hampshire: Targeted Prevention That Worked

New Hampshire illustrates the opposite path. Beginning in the early 1990s, the state implemented a targeted, statewide spay/neuter program for low-income pet owners, the very population most at risk of producing shelter intakes. Within a decade, New Hampshire reduced shelter euthanasia by over 75%, achieving one of the lowest per capita intake rates in the nation.

Unlike Los Angeles, New Hampshire aimed its resources where they mattered most, proving that prevention, strategically concentrated and scaled, can permanently bend the curve. The lesson is unmistakable: prevention doesn’t just slow the flood, it ends it.

Where Los Angeles doubled down on optics, New Hampshire doubled down on prevention.

The Crisis Dividend: How Animal Welfare Institutions Profit from Overcrowding

Reward rescue over prevention, and the outcome is guaranteed: perpetual overcrowding, endless appeals, and institutions that prosper because the crisis never ends.

Animal welfare’s paradox is clear: ending pet overpopulation would undercut the very institutions now enriched by the crisis dividend. And it’s not only national nonprofits. Corporate stakeholders—from PetSmart Charities to the Petco Love Foundation—also profit from a steady supply of adoptable animals. By shifting their giving away from large-scale spay/neuter toward adoption-based models, they guarantee an endless flow of pets through their retail outlets. Each adoption creates not just a “save,” but a new, long-term customer for food, supplies, and veterinary services.

In this ecosystem, crisis isn’t just tolerated, it’s monetized. Prevention threatens not only nonprofit relevance, but also corporate revenue.

The contrast is stark: where prevention worked, crisis abated; where crisis was incentivized, prevention withered. That contrast points directly to the steps shelter managers can take today.

Recommendations: How Shelter Managers Can Break the Crisis Cycle

Shelter leaders don’t control national boardrooms, but they can change how their own communities measure success, frame the narrative, and demand better incentives. To realign the field toward prevention, shelter managers must:

• Audit Local Incentives: Ensure grants, recognition programs, and donor appeals reward prevention as much as, if not more than, rescue.

• Promote Prevention-Based Metrics: Track intakes and outcomes using per capita rates (e.g., per 1,000 residents), not just live-release rates, so progress is measured honestly at the community level.

• Educate Stakeholders: Use your data and case studies to show policymakers, media, and donors how crisis-dependent models guarantee failure, and how prevention rewrites the outcome.

• Fund Prevention at Scale: Collaborate with local partners to restore affordable, universal spay/neuter and accessible care.

• Reframe the Narrative: Celebrate “repairing the dam” as much as “pulling animals from the flood.” Make prevention heroic.

The choice is clear: continue bailing water in a system designed to flood, or lead your community to the prevention dividend: fewer homeless pets, less suffering, lower costs, and freedom from perpetual crisis.

Questions Every Donor Should Ask Before Giving

The future of animal welfare won’t be decided only in boardrooms or shelters, but at kitchen tables, by the choices donors make. If you want your dollars to reduce suffering rather than perpetuate crisis, ask these questions before writing a check:

1. How much of your budget goes to prevention (spay/neuter, access to care, keeping pets with families) versus downstream rescue and transport?

2. Do your success metrics measure fewer animals entering the system or only how many make it out?

3. What’s your plan to reduce community intakes over the next five years?

4. Are you collaborating with others to fund prevention at scale or are you only competing for crisis dollars?

5. If spay/neuter is proven, why isn’t it central to your strategy?

Donors have more power than they realize. By asking sharper questions, they can help shift incentives from crisis management to crisis prevention, thereby restoring accountability to a system that too often thrives on perpetual crisis. Every donor dollar is a vote. Cast it for prevention, not perpetual crisis.

The Prevention Dividend is At Hand

Realigning incentives toward prevention doesn’t demand decades, it can show results in a single election cycle. Communities that restore affordable, universal spay/neuter and accessible care see intakes drop within 2–3 years.

By 2030, the national landscape could look dramatically different:

• Shelters Transformed: From overcrowded warehouses into true community resource hubs—educating, assisting, and keeping pets out of crisis in the first place.

• Smarter Spending: Every dollar invested upstream in prevention saves multiples more downstream, freeing millions in municipal budgets and reducing taxpayer burden.

• Healthier Communities: Universal access to spay/neuter and veterinary care closes equity gaps, lowers disease risks, and strengthens the human–animal bond.

• Trusted Institutions: Animal welfare agencies are seen not as permanent beggars for emergency aid, but as effective, sustainable stewards of community well-being.

• A Lasting Legacy: Leaders who choose prevention are remembered not for managing endless crises, but for ending them.

This is the prevention dividend: fewer animals in crisis, fewer taxpayer dollars wasted, and a more humane, sustainable system. The choice is ours: cling to the crisis dividend, or invest in prevention and see the payoff in our own lifetimes.

We can keep bailing water, or we can repair the dam once and for all.

Ed Boks is the former Executive Director of animal care and control agencies in New York City, Los Angeles, and Maricopa County, and a former board member of the National Animal Control Association. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Sentient Media, and now on Animal Politics with Ed Boks—home to a vibrant community of readers in 48 states and 61 countries. Join the conversation shaping the future of animal welfare.