Best Friends Animal Society’s 2020 national shelter dataset showed U.S. shelters saving more animals than at any point the organization had recorded: an 83% save rate and 347,000 unnecessary deaths. Its editorial, “Keeping up the Pace of Lifesaving,” argues that this progress is fragile unless shelters and communities keep the programs that produced it. These are historical figures from the 2020 analysis. They are not current national estimates.
The 2020 numbers, and what each one means
The editorial is by Brent Toellner, senior director, national programs at Best Friends Animal Society. The page does not show a publication date, so treat every figure below as belonging to the 2020 dataset period as Best Friends reported it. We have not checked the underlying dataset documentation or methodology.
| Measure | Reported figure (Best Friends, 2020 dataset) |
|---|---|
| Unnecessary animal deaths | 347,000, which the editorial calls the lowest number then recorded. It describes this as a 76% reduction since the no-kill 2025 goal was set in 2016. |
| National save rate | 83%, up 15 percentage points over five years |
| No-kill status | 48% of shelters and one-third of communities |
| Daily losses | More than 950 cats and dogs per day still lost their lives for lack of a safe place |
| Cats versus dogs | Cats lost their lives at more than twice the rate of dogs, even though dog intake was reported as 5% higher |
| Geographic concentration | California and Texas accounted for 38% of the lifesaving progress reported for the preceding year |
The save rate and the death count tell different stories. A rising save rate means more animals leave shelters alive. The 347,000 figure is the remaining gap, and the editorial’s point is that the gap is still large even after a big improvement.
Cats are the largest remaining gap
The editorial attributes much of the cat toll to outdoor community cats. That helps explain why cats fared worse despite lower intake. Many of these cats are healthy and live outside, and they can end up in shelters that have no way to move them out alive. The editorial points to two approaches.
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- TNVR (trap-neuter-vaccinate-return) and return-to-field (RTF): for outdoor community cats, these programs keep them out of the kill statistics. The cats are sterilized and vaccinated, then returned to where they live.
- Foster programs: the editorial calls these essential for adoptable cats and kittens that have no neighborhood to return to. It says the same for neonates, which need round-the-clock care that shelters often cannot give.
Programs to keep from 2020
The editorial urges shelters to hold on to practices that were introduced or expanded in 2020 and to keep improving them. It groups them by the problem each one addresses.
| Problem | Program the editorial names |
|---|---|
| Outdoor community cats | TNVR and RTF |
| Kittens, neonates and adoptable cats with no neighborhood home | Foster programs |
| Avoidable intake and getting pets back to families | Managed (appointment-based) intake, enhanced return-to-owner including return-to-owner in the field, and owner-retention programs |
| Uneven organizational capacity | Peer mentoring, in which no-kill shelters help those still working toward it |
The editorial describes these as categories of practice. It does not offer a controlled comparison or effect sizes, so the numbers above cannot be credited to any single program.
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Using data to guide resources
The editorial also mentions Best Friends’ pet lifesaving dashboard. It presents the dashboard as a way for communities to gauge progress and find where resources are needed. That matters because the figures show how uneven progress is: California and Texas made up 38% of the prior year’s gains, and only one-third of communities had reached no-kill status.
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Treat it as a snapshot of the sector’s direction in 2020. It shows what Best Friends considered the main levers: community cat programs, fostering, intake management, keeping pets with their families, and shared knowledge. For current conditions, check the latest figures on Best Friends’ dashboard, because 2020 numbers say nothing about where the trend has gone since.
The editorial ends with a call to action: “Now let’s keep the momentum rolling and continue saving those lives together.”
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