- Animal shelters in France are struggling under a surge in pet abandonment.
- Soaring pet care costs, magistrates, and lack of sterilization are to blame, they say.
- Prior reporting linked the surge to callous vacationers — but the shelters disputed that.
People in France are abandoning their pets at alarming rates on their way to vacation spots — but the recent trend has nothing to do with the time of year vacation, several shelters told Insider.
France's transport minister, Clément Beaune, cast the blame on vacationers in comments earlier this month, which Insider and other outlets reported on. But workers dealing with the influx see a deeper problem.
Animal workers have indeed seen their shelters taken by storm, with tens of thousands of animals being dropped off or abandoned in recent months.
The Society for the Protection of Animals, a Paris-based charity, issued an urgent call for contributions and adoptions, saying its "exhausted" teams had taken in more than 14,000 animals this summer.
Driving the influxes were litters of kittens and aggressive dogs, said Stéphane Lamart, founder and director of a shelter association that bears his name and operates across France.
But, he said, "the situation is a lot more complex than" people ditching their pets en route to the beach. It has been years in the making, he said.
Insider spoke with three sources in animal shelters, who all argued the deeper problem was that owners were not held accountable for abandoning pets, which is against French law.
They also said prosecutors and magistrates were to blame for rarely enforcing laws meant to protect animals.
"If a magistrate isn't sensitive to animals and doesn't give a damn about a dog or a cat, you're going to get ridiculous legal decisions. And from one jurisdiction to another, this changes," Lamart said.
In France, leaving a pet in the wild is against the law and punishable by three years in prison and a maximum fine of $32,740.
Despite the legislation, France's cat and dog registration service counted more than 333,000 abandoned pets in France last year.
The real number is likely much higher, said Lamart, who wants French officials to change how it generates its statistics.
For the past 20 years, he said, authorities have reported numbers ranging from 60-100,000 abandoned pets a year.
"We need to show that we have many more abandoned animals than that, so that the government will take the necessary measures," Lamart said.
Meanwhile, France's interior ministry posted figures showing a 30% increase in acts of cruelty against animals over the last five years.
Elisa Gorins, spokesperson for Agir pour la Vie Animale, a shelter in Normandy, said the rising abandonment rates "are not at all" linked to summer vacations, but rather to soaring pet care costs, driven by inflation.
"Some people just can't cope with it anymore, especially when it comes to animals with chronic illnesses that require constant treatment, such as diabetes," she said.
As a result, French animal-rescue centers say they are overwhelmed.
Christophe Marie, Deputy Director of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, an animal welfare organization, said shelters were hitting "saturation" levels and can't take in any more pets. Some owners, he said, resort to extreme violence to "get rid of them".
One of the dogs his shelter took care of was tied up behind its owner's car and dragged several miles, he said.
The dog didn't die, so his owner stabbed it in the side of the eye and between the eyes, leaving it to "rot in a pit", Marie said. The dog survived even that, was helped by the shelter, and was discharged in good health, he said.
"These are very extreme cases, but unfortunately they contribute to the saturation of the shelters, because they are also animals that are very difficult to re-home," he added.
To fix shelter saturation and eradicate animal cruelty, Lamart said French authorities need to tackle the animal overpopulation crisis by regulating reproduction rates through compulsory sterilization.
"Animal protection is a big issue. I don't think the French government is doing enough for animal protection," he said.
Earlier this year, the French government announced that 4,000 police officers — one for each police station — would be trained to deal with animal cruelty.