Julie Cassadore was stunned when the wildfire ripped through the San Carlos Apache Reservation this July. “The whole downtown was on fire,” she said. “It was just big, big, big clouds of black smoke, and you could hear what sounded like propane tanks exploding. I saw people running with their children.”
That’s when the calls started.
Cassadore is San Carlos Apache and the founder of Geronimo Animal Rescue Team, a non-profit animal care and adoption organization on the reservation. Like the Watch Fire burned around 2,000 hectares and 20 houses destroyedCassadore’s team began a long night of rescues.
“We drove around with burnt dogs with their burnt paws,” she said. “We did it all night.”
But San Carlos doesn’t have an animal shelter of its own, so Cassadore has spent the last month working hard to find safe homes for the 20 animals rescued that night.
The Watch Fire started with arson, but high temperatures and drier conditions driven by climate change have exacerbated the fire. As global temperatures rise and events such as wildfires become more extreme, the stakes increase for indigenous communities and their animals. A lack of animal shelters and foster homes is causing higher euthanasia rates, while intense heat is putting homeless dogs and cats at serious risk. Between the nationwide shortage of veterinariansunderfunded infrastructure in indigenous communities, and an increase in the animals needing care, climate change affects the beloved “rez dog” in a myriad of ways.
Much of the problem has roots in the Covid-19 outbreak. In 2020, as the virus spread and lockdowns were imposed, spay and neuter clinics were closed across the country. On the Leech Lake Reservation, for example, puppy season usually began in the spring. Now it lasts almost the whole year. “Puppy season has been on the reservation for over two years now, and in 15 years of doing it, I’ve never seen it like this,” said Jennifer Fitzer of Leech Lake Legacyan animal rescue organization on the Reserve.
“Before pandemic, I easily had 20 places every weekend,” Fitzer said. Now, she says, it is difficult to find places for even one dog. “It’s a very, very, very difficult time in animal rescue right now.”
Fitzer adds that as the summers get hotter, she sees more and more animals suffering from dehydration.
Norman Begay is Díne and the Animal Control Program Manager on the Navajo Nation. He said his office gets calls for about 20 dogs a day, and estimates there are about 180,000 homeless dogs on the reserve. His office has only 12 officers and no adoption program to keep animals long-term. “It’s a liability,” he said. “Some of these dogs are dangerous.” In 2021 a 13-year-old girl on the reserve was killed by a pack of dogs.
Of the animals raised on Navajo Nation, heat is still a problem. “If it’s too hot outside, we can’t let dog walkers take them out in the middle of the day,” says Stacie Voss, shelter manager at the Farmington Animal Shelter in Arizona, a two-hour drive from Navajo Nation. She said that summer is their busy season and that 15 percent of their intake comes from the Navajo Nation.
There are no statistics on how many homeless animals live in indigenous communities, but the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that 6.5 million dogs and cats will enter American shelters in 2023. Only 4.8 million were adopted.
“Shelters across the country are more crowded,” wrote Working with Native Americans, a nonprofit organization that provides funding for animal care in tribal communities. “It has become more difficult to relocate dogs to shelters that are not reserved for adoption.”
Because euthanasia rates are increasing exponentially in areas without accessible spay or neuter clinics, tribes have worked to curb animal populations in creative ways. On the Wind River reservation, the Northern Arapaho tribe a mobile COVID testing vehicle in a mobile sterilization and neutering clinic to help deal with the homeless animal population, while the Partnership with Native Americansa nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance to Native communities has committed to investing $100,000 a year for tribal and spay clinics, foster homes and education efforts to support the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, Navajo Nation, White Mountain Apache Reservation and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. The Humane Society of Western Montana has partnered with the Blackfeet Nation, Chippewa Cree Tribe and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribe to provide clinics, vaccines and adoption assistance.
A few years ago, Julie Cassadore, of San Carlos Apache, said nearby shelters would not take animals from her reserve because of discrimination. “Handout, you’re not helping us because we’re Apaches,” she remembers telling a nearby shelter that refused to take dogs from San Carlos.
But that moment inspired her to start the Geronimo Animal Rescue Team, and this year she has the Award for more than a pet community of the Human society, with the help of her all-Apache volunteer team. Now she has support from the San Carlos Tribal Council to build an animal shelter on the reservation — a move Cassadore says will help more animals as the days get warmer.
“People can come and foster and adopt our dogs, instead of us having to take them from the reserve,” she said. “We hope that will happen.”
