Challenges in Sheltering Seized Animals from Hoarders from a One Welfare Perspective

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Animal hoarding is a serious behavioral issue that overwhelms hoarders and impacts many animals, causing them to suffer in inadequate, unsanitary, and hidden environments. It poses significant challenges to animal welfare, frequently leading to mistreatment, along with threats to human health. When such an obsessive accumulation of animals is discovered, exposing their harmful condition, there are not perfect solutions. Positive interventions can be planned by using the emerging One Welfare approach, which recognizes the interdependence of animal welfare, human well-being, and the environment. Typically, the accumulated animals are seized and relocated to a shelter, where additional challenges arise for both the animals and the shelter staff. The One Welfare approach, which is increasingly being used alongside One Health to work at the interface of human and animal health and welfare, could be adopted to address the poor state of humans while also planning strategies that benefit animals, including their conditions in shelters. In this paper, I examine the main issues surrounding animal hoarding, as well as the challenges raised by the common transfer of animals to shelters in light of the One Welfare principles. ABSTRACT: Animal hoarding is a complex issue that, when discovered, frequently necessitates opening shelter doors to many animals. This is due to hoarders’ inability to provide even the most basic welfare standards for their animals, resulting in poor welfare conditions that frequently border on mistreatment. These people are frequently unaware of their failure to care for their animals, as well as of the harm that they cause to people around them and the environment. They usually do not care for themselves either. The majority of hoarders have difficult histories, and they all need help getting back on track. When the agencies discover the status quo, the animals are usually seized and taken to shelters, where they face a variety of welfare consequences, beginning with confinement in an unknown environment that is associated with additional risks (e.g., infectious diseases, behavioral deterioration, and distress). Furthermore, the targeted shelters are frequently overcrowded and cannot adequately accommodate the large numbers of animals found in hoarders’ environments. The One Welfare approach, which is increasingly being used alongside One Health to work at the intersection of human and animal health and welfare, could be adopted to benefit animals while also addressing the poor states of humans. This concept’s depiction of the interconnections between animal welfare, human well-being, and the environment can fit with all the components of the animal-hoarding phenomenon, including the peculiarities of the hoarding environment, as well as those of shelters where animals are often moved. The purpose of this paper is to offer insights into how the One Welfare concept may be critical in tackling all of the interests concerned in these cases and offering solutions.