How Many Animals Are Euthanized in NC Each Year?

North Carolina’s reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats in 2025, according to the state’s 2025 Public Animal Shelter Report. That’s 26.0 percent of every dog and cat that came through a shelter door, about one every 13 minutes, and more than three times the national rate of 8 percent. Across the United States, shelters euthanized approximately 597,000 dogs and cats in 2025, including about 320,000 dogs.

Those are the headline answers. The fuller picture matters just as much: which numbers come from which source, why the counts differ, how North Carolina compares with the rest of the country, and what actually pushes euthanasia down. This post lays out the verified statistics, with every figure tied to its dataset and year, so advocates, journalists, and anyone searching for the real numbers can cite them with confidence.

TL;DR: U.S. shelters euthanized about 597,000 dogs and cats in 2025, roughly 320,000 dogs and 277,000 cats (Shelter Animals Count via ASPCA). North Carolina’s reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 in 2025, 26.0 percent of intake (NC DACS), more than three times the national rate of 8 percent (ASPCA). The national trend is falling fast; NC’s rate rose from 22 percent in 2021 to 26.1 percent in 2024 and held at 26.0 percent in 2025 (NC DACS). Spay/neuter access, TNR, and fostering are what bring the number down. Sign the petition to fund them in NC.

How Many Dogs and Cats Are Euthanized Each Year in the U.S.?

The most widely cited national count comes from Shelter Animals Count, the nonprofit database that joined the ASPCA in 2025. Its latest full-year data shows approximately 597,000 dogs and cats euthanized in U.S. shelters in 2025: about 320,000 dogs and 277,000 cats (ASPCA).

Context makes that number legible. In 2025, 5.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters and rescues, 2.8 million dogs and 3 million cats. About 4.2 million of them were adopted. The rest went home to their owners, transferred to rescues, or didn’t leave alive. The ASPCA reports that the national euthanasia rate fell from 10 percent in 2019 to 8 percent in 2025.

Best Friends Animal Society runs its own national dataset, and its 2025 numbers tell the same story with a different count: 396,000 dogs and cats killed in U.S. shelters in 2025, including 187,000 cats, the lowest cat total ever recorded. Dog deaths fell 8.5 percent from 2024, nearly 20,000 fewer dogs. The national save rate reached 82.5 percent, and 68 percent of U.S. shelters now meet the no-kill benchmark (Best Friends, 2025 National Shelter Data Report). The two organizations survey different sets of shelters and apply different counting rules, which is why their totals differ. What they agree on is the direction: down, sharply, from around 1 million dogs and cats killed in 2016 (Best Friends).

That 8 percent national rate is the benchmark that matters for the rest of this post. Hold on to it, because North Carolina’s number isn’t close.

How Many Animals Are Euthanized in North Carolina Each Year?

North Carolina publishes real data on this question, which most states don’t do well. Every registered county and municipal shelter reports its yearly intake, adoptions, returns to owner, and euthanasia counts by species to the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which compiles them into an annual Public Animal Shelter Report (NC DACS shelter reports).

The answer for 2025: reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats, 26.0 percent of 150,784 intakes, across 65 counties that reported dog or cat intake (NC DACS 2025 Public Animal Shelter Report, the file the state replaced on October 12, 2026; counties that file late may still be added). That works out to about one animal every 13 minutes. 2024 was no better: 40,168 euthanized, 26.1 percent of 153,692 intakes, in the state’s final 2024 report. Set that against the national picture, where the ASPCA puts the 2025 euthanasia rate at 8 percent, and the scale of the problem is plain. North Carolina’s rate is more than three times the national rate.

The trend line hurts more than the snapshot. North Carolina’s statewide euthanasia rate fell from 66 percent in 2010 to a low of 22 percent in 2021, more than a decade of steady, hard-won progress. Then it reversed. The rate rose to about 28 percent in 2023 and has held near 26 percent since: 26.1 percent in 2024 and 26.0 percent in the state’s 2025 file (NC DACS annual shelter reports; the 2010 figure is from a fiscal-year report). Progress has stalled.

The statewide average also hides a staggering spread between counties. In 2024, Anson County euthanized under 2 percent of its intake, and Stanly and Macon counties each recorded 3 percent. Wake County reported 16 percent to WRAL. At the other end, Washington County reached 74 percent, Columbus County 80 percent, and Nash County was reported at 105 percent, a figure the county disputes (WRAL Investigates). A rate above 100 percent is possible on paper when a shelter euthanizes animals carried over from the prior year.

The raw county numbers make it concrete. Columbus County’s shelter took in 1,656 dogs in 2024. It adopted out 124 and euthanized 1,223. For cats: 1,220 in, 42 adopted, 1,067 euthanized (NC DACS 2024 report). Where an animal lands in North Carolina, more than almost anything else, decides whether it comes out alive. We break down the full county-by-county picture, and what separates the best counties from the worst, in our report on the NC pet overpopulation crisis. For the full county-level breakdown from the newer 2025 calendar-year file, see our county-by-county NC animal shelter report.

Why Do Shelters Euthanize Animals?

Mostly, it’s arithmetic, not cruelty. When more animals come in than leave through adoption, return to owner, or transfer to rescue, kennels fill. Once a shelter is past capacity, animals are euthanized to make room for the ones still arriving. The 2025 national numbers show the gap: 5.8 million animals in, 4.2 million adopted, with returns and transfers covering only part of the rest (ASPCA).

Cats carry a disproportionate share of the risk. Every spring and summer, kitten season floods Southern shelters with litters faster than adopters absorb them, and unsocialized outdoor cats have historically been euthanized at high rates because they can’t be placed in homes.

A small share of euthanasia involves genuinely untreatable suffering. That’s why the no-kill movement sets its benchmark at a 90 percent save rate rather than 100: Best Friends calls 90 percent a meaningful, common-sense threshold because some animals arrive with medical or behavioral conditions that can’t be remedied (Best Friends). The tragedy in North Carolina isn’t that shelter euthanasia exists. It’s that at about 26 percent, the state is euthanizing far beyond those cases, and mostly for space.

What Actually Drives the Number Down?

The states that solved this didn’t do it with bigger shelters. They did it by shrinking the number of animals that need a shelter in the first place, and by moving the ones who arrive out faster. Three levers do most of the work.

Spay and neuter access. Every prevented litter is four to six animals that never join the intake line. Affordability is the barrier for most families, which is why low-cost spay and neuter clinics across NC matter more than any other single resource. Fixing your own pet is the cheapest euthanasia prevention there is. The second cheapest is keeping a pet out of the intake line at all, which is what rehoming a dog yourself instead of surrendering is for.

TNR for community cats. Trap-neuter-return takes outdoor cats out of the euthanasia pipeline entirely: sterilized community cats stay in their territory instead of dying in a kennel, and colonies stop producing kittens. It’s no accident that cats are where the nation’s sharpest progress is happening, with cat deaths at a record low in 2025. North Carolina still has no state funding for it; the fiscal case for state-funded TNR is one we’ve made in detail.

Fostering and adoption capacity. Every foster home is a kennel freed without a death. Fostering in NC takes an evening to set up and directly buys time for animals in overcrowded county shelters. Adopting opens a kennel for good, and the 100-County Pet List shows the dogs and cats waiting at NC shelters and rescues today. On the outcome side, six states are now no-kill statewide: Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the Best Friends 2025 data, and Idaho and Montana since early 2026 (Best Friends). New Hampshire built its path with a state spay/neuter fund financed by a small dog license surcharge, a model we’ve profiled in the states that got it right, and we track NC’s own progress toward that standard in our no-kill NC explainer.

None of these levers pull themselves. They’re funded, or they’re not. That’s a policy choice made in Raleigh every budget cycle, and it’s the reason this site exists. For the dollars behind that choice, see what spay/neuter saves North Carolina.

Key Euthanasia Statistics at a Glance

For journalists, students, and advocates who need the numbers fast, with sources and years attached:

• About 597,000 dogs and cats were euthanized in U.S. shelters in 2025: roughly 320,000 dogs and 277,000 cats (Shelter Animals Count, via ASPCA).
• 5.8 million dogs and cats entered U.S. shelters and rescues in 2025; 4.2 million were adopted (Shelter Animals Count, via ASPCA).
• Best Friends’ 2025 dataset counts 396,000 dogs and cats killed, including a record-low 187,000 cats; the national save rate is 82.5 percent, and 68 percent of shelters are no-kill (Best Friends, 2025).
• In 2016, around 1 million dogs and cats were killed in U.S. shelters (Best Friends).
• North Carolina’s reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats in 2025, 26.0 percent of 150,784 intakes, about one every 13 minutes (NC DACS 2025 Public Animal Shelter Report, file replaced October 12, 2026). In 2024 the count was 40,168, 26.1 percent of intake (NC DACS 2024 report).
• NC’s 26.0 percent is more than three times the national rate of 8 percent in 2025 (ASPCA, citing Shelter Animals Count).
• Best Friends Animal Society ranks North Carolina third in the nation for the number of shelter dogs and cats that still need to be saved each year, about 36,900 (2025 data, released April 2, 2026).
• NC’s rate fell from 66 percent in 2010 to 22 percent in 2021, then rose to 26.1 percent in 2024 (NC DACS annual shelter reports).
• 2024 NC county euthanasia rates ranged from under 2 percent (Anson) to a reported 105 percent (Nash, disputed by the county), with Columbus at 80 percent (WRAL Investigates).
• In Best Friends’ 2022 dataset, five states, Texas, California, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia, accounted for 54 percent of all dogs and cats killed in U.S. shelters (Best Friends, 2022).

Frequently Asked Questions

The Number Is a Choice North Carolina Keeps Making

Nearly forty thousand animals a year is not a fact of nature. It’s the output of underfunded spay/neuter access, zero state TNR funding, and county shelters left to absorb a statewide problem alone. Other states proved the number moves when policy moves, and North Carolina itself proved it between 2010 and 2021.

If these numbers should be smaller, act like it. Sign the petition for steady state spay/neuter funding, email your NC representative, get your own pet fixed at a low-cost clinic, or open your home as a foster. Every one of those moves subtracts from next year’s count.