Territory animal shelters sounded the alarm yet again Monday.
The St. Croix Animal Welfare Center said in a statement that neither they nor the St. Thomas Humane Society, the Animal Care Center of St. John, Ruff Start, or R.E.A.L. Cruzan Cats have received the promised funding from the Virgin Islands government.
“Animal shelters across the territory are in danger of closing their doors,” according to the statement.
For years, the government has relied on the shelters to perform critical services typically done by municipal animal control departments. Monday’s call to action came months after SCAWC announced that it would have to suspend its open intake and its spay and neuter programs because the government hadn’t renewed a long-standing contract with the shelter that expired Sept. 30.
“Within weeks, the USVI Government ‘awarded’ SCAWC with a $175,000 grant for general operations and a $50,000 grant for a spay/neuter program on October 22, 2024,” according to Monday’s press release from the center. “Sadly, those funds were never received.”
SCAWC Public Relations and Marketing Director Becca Hughson told the Source Monday that the first grant has historically been received in four installments, and the center has yet to receive the first two. The $50,000 spay and neuter funding was received biannually, and the center did not receive its first installment on Jan. 1.
“And also … the funding that the government is supposed to give to St. Thomas and St. John — you know, we have our clinic, we have other means, we have a really solid foundation for fundraising. But for St. Thomas and St. John, their government funding basically carries them through the year,” she said. “It pays for their staff. Without their government funding, they have very little chance of staying open. So … we’re limping along — and we’re barely making payroll. I can’t even imagine how difficult it is on St. Thomas and St. John.”
According to SCAWC, the center attempted to reach the V.I. Agriculture Department — which oversees their grant funding — multiple times over several months. The center’s executive director eventually visited the department on Feb. 24. Hughson said they learned that their contract had never been executed and that their point person at the department was no longer employed there.
“And none of the other shelters have heard from that contact either, so we don’t know what happened to them,” she said. “But I know we didn’t get the idea that she had necessarily [been] replaced with anyone, and … we’re not even sure if anyone has even checked her emails.”
Hughson said the center can’t sustain an open-door shelter without the funds, forcing them to take in animals on a case-by-case basis.
“And when it boils down to it — and we hate to have to do this — but we have to determine whether or not that animal is adoptable. If we don’t think it can be adoptable, then we simply can’t even take it,” she said. The center used to take animals in regardless of whether they were sick or aggressive.
“But really … it sucks. It’s just like, is this animal adoptable, yes or no? If it’s adoptable, then yes — if we have space. If we don’t have space, then no,” she said.
Asked about the shelters’ funding Monday, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said he’d look into the issue.
“I don’t think that’s a matter of money,” he said. “That’s just a matter of — we don’t have a contract, and contracts take forever. Because the last time that came up, that was the problem. They didn’t have a contract. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the money.”
