Tim Shortt

FLORIDA TODAY

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced Friday that Brevard County Animal Services has officially received the status of a “No Kill Community.”

To earn the status, Ivey said, locales have to have a live release rate at above 90 percent for more than a year.

Ivey noted the progress since the Brevard County Sheriff's Office assumed command of the shelter on Oct. 1, 2014.

“If you remember, 55 percent is where we started, and, today, our live release rate for the past 12 months is at 94.86 percent, which is just an amazing accomplishment by an amazing team," Ivey said. "Our live release rate has gone as high in some months as 96 percent. I think, for the month of September, as a matter of fact, we’re at 95 percent.”

Part of that improvement can be attributed to a program that encourages people not to bring pets to shelters in the first place.

“Brevard started a surrender prevention program, where they’re actually helping people help themselves, help them keep their pets, help them place their pets outside the shelter, and the statistics are phenomenal,” said Cameron Moore, program manager with Target Zero, which describes itself as an organization that mentors public and private shelters, along with animal-welfare organizations. “They are now our model program that we share across the country.”

Ivey credited the difference to a host of people.

“Not many government-maintained open intake shelters have the ability to say that they are no-kill. For our team to have gotten there is just an amazing effort,” Ivey said. “Hundreds of volunteers, hundreds of people in our community that understand what the mission is.”

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Ivey also announced a new partnership with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Brevard and the closing of the North Animal Care Center in Titusville.

“We have found that we no longer need to occupy the North Animal Care Center,” Ivey said. “Now, there is obviously a big geographic difference between someone in Titusville that has an animal or that finds a stray and coming down to Melbourne, so what we’ve done is extended our partnership with the SPCA, and starting Oct. 1, one of our employees will be based and housed at SPCA in Titusville.”

The sheriff's office will also hold a community celebration and ribbon-cutting from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct. 1 to celebrate the opening of a new community dog park. It will be held at the South Animal Care Center at 5100 W. Eau Gallie Blvd. in Melbourne.