I live in Philadelphia and I'm active in a group which specialized in TNR for feral and stray cats in the city; we're partnered with Alley Cat Allies and the city's animal control.
We have several large colonies which routinely receive special attention and have special spay/neuter clinics in addition to our regularly scheduled ones.
The former seem to crop up on an emergency/opportunistic basis and are unpredictable. I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to coordinate our resources, and New York's COMPSTAT seems like a viable model.
COMPSTAT was/is a program run by the NYPD to map and track crime in the city and allocate police resources accordingly. A similar program with a centralized but accessible database could be used to map and track both large and small feral colonies in the city and guide the allocation of trapper/clinic resources.
We've wonderful individuals throughout the city "fighting the good fight"; but they'd be more effective if they were networked and coordinated....
We have several large colonies which routinely receive special attention and have special spay/neuter clinics in addition to our regularly scheduled ones.
The former seem to crop up on an emergency/opportunistic basis and are unpredictable. I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to coordinate our resources, and New York's COMPSTAT seems like a viable model.
COMPSTAT was/is a program run by the NYPD to map and track crime in the city and allocate police resources accordingly. A similar program with a centralized but accessible database could be used to map and track both large and small feral colonies in the city and guide the allocation of trapper/clinic resources.
We've wonderful individuals throughout the city "fighting the good fight"; but they'd be more effective if they were networked and coordinated....
