Animal shelters in Albuquerque are already full or beyond capacity, and officials say the number of animal submissions is on the rise.

Albuquerque's animal shelters are already facing a space shortage, but they have also experienced a 90% increase in owner surrenders of animals last year, a recent report from KRQE said. Albuquerque's Animal Welfare Department reported that almost 5,000 animals were surrendered by their owners in 2022, and almost 10,000 stray animals were picked up. Shelter officials have attributed this trend to current economic conditions.

"We are full, and in order for us to make space for the new ones coming in, we need to get the others adopted," Carolyn Ortego, Albuquerque Animal Welfare director, told KRQE. "We did a gap analysis and what we saw in our data is that we increased in our owner surrenders by 90 percent last year, so [we've] almost doubled in our owner surrenders."

Although Ortega believes the economy is one of the main drivers of the surge in animal surrenders, it is not the only one.

"Everybody has a different reason for surrendering their pet, and we don't judge," she said. "We want to make sure that the pet is safe, but we also know that a shelter is not always the best place for a pet."

Ortego has proposed an online platform that connects potential pet adopters with people looking to surrender their animals as a way to address the overcrowding, KRQE reported. Her idea is to create an online space where pet owners can input their pet's traits and match them with potential adopters looking for those characteristics. The plan will be presented to the Albuquerque City Council as part of a resolution that establishes one-year objectives for the City, with the hope of launching the virtual matching program during the next fiscal year.