Animal Services in New Mexico: A Needs Assessment for the North Central Region
A malnourished stray dog roams a local neighborhood. An overcrowded county shelter is stretched to its absolute limit. A Tribal natural resources director struggles to mitigate the land and water impacts caused by an expanding, unmanaged free-roaming horse herd. A rural community is left entirely unequipped to safely evacuate large animals during a wildfire.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the direct results of system failures. The consequences ripple outward—straining law enforcement, draining city and county budgets, threatening public health, shifting a heavy financial burden directly onto taxpayers, and creating inhumane suffering.
Animal Services in New Mexico: A Needs Assessment for the North Central Region (2026) is a groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind report that evaluates the current landscape of animal welfare in New Mexico. Based on more than 100 interviews with boots-on-the-ground stakeholders and experts, this assessment analyzes four core pillars of the sector: animal shelters, animal control programs, equine rescues, and animal-related disaster preparedness and response.
While the assessment focuses geographically on the north central region, this report reveals interconnected challenges—spanning infrastructure deficits and service gaps—that exist in every corner of New Mexico. Left unaddressed, these systemic deficiencies are actively jeopardizing public health, safety, local economic development, and overall quality of life.
The findings highlight a compelling need for a unified strategy, illustrating that local recommendations cannot be achieved without a coordinated statewide approach. One of the most critical findings of this report exposes the need for a centralized and coordinated approach to addressing animal issues statewide: the creation of a dedicated New Mexico Department of Animal Protection. This agency would possess the authority and funding to determine needs, identify cross-agency needs and facilitate programs, request, consolidate, and distribute resources, regulate facilities, support complex cruelty investigations, and ensure management of long-neglected programs on a statewide level.
Animal Protection New Mexico will be using this report and its recommendations for the foreseeable future, to pursue enhancements in systems, infrastructure, and funding to address the specific needs. APNM will need New Mexicans across the state—including state and local policymakers, animal shelter and rescue personnel, veterinary professionals, law enforcement officials, emergency responders, and animal advocates—to carefully explore this report, share its findings, and collaborate with us and others on enacting change. By taking decisive, strategic action together, New Mexico can ensure that “humane treatment of animals” becomes a lasting cornerstone of the Land of Enchantment.
Read the Report
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Download the Report
Access a complimentary, printable PDF of the full report here.
Limited print and bound editions are available for New Mexico state and local policymakers and government officials, while supply lasts. To request a physical copy, please contact Jessica Shelton, APNM’s Chief Strategy Officer, at jessica@apnm.org.
Please Join Us in This Effort
Do you believe in this vision? Do you have ideas to contribute?
Do you have a story to share that demonstrates the importance of this report and the campaign to create a State Department of Animal Protection?
We want to hear from you.
Please add your name to express your support and/or tell us how you see the findings from the report or a future Department of Animal Protection impacting your work and life.
