The board of directors of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County announced Tuesday that Ashley Mikulsky has been named chief executive officer of the Cumru Township animal shelter.
She had been serving as acting CEO since Alexis Pagoulatos stepped down from the position in August.
Pagoulatos left to become the executive director of the Humane Society of Utah, in Murray.
Mikulsky is a graduate of Exeter High School and received a Bachelor of Science degree in animal biotechnology and conservation from Delaware Valley University and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Alvernia University. She and her husband, Chuck, reside in Berks with their two cats and two German shepherds.
Mikulsky said the biggest challenge the ARL — as well as all animal welfare organizations — is facing is a lack of public education.
Part of that is how people deal with community cats, which is an umbrella term for felines living outdoors that may be feral or socialized, but have no owner.
“I think it is absolutely no secret that community cats are Berks County’s No. 1 challenge,” she said. “We, like every other shelter nationwide, have been suffering from the veterinary shortage that is both a public and nonprofit issue. However it is important to me to prioritize what our community’s biggest need is and that is community cats.”
Mikulsky said the ARL’s community cat trap-neuter-release program will be reinstated within the next 30 days. It had been on hiatus due to staffing shortages.
“Within the next month, we will have some iteration of TNR offerings coming back,” she said. “I can’t share with you to what detail that will be. Obviously it is subject to what our current staffing structure looks like, but we are bringing that back in the next 30 days in a limited capacity and that will scale as more veterinary support does.”
Having more TNR services available to Berks residents is not a solution by itself. Mikulsky said community education and educating government representatives are the key to success.
“I would say nationwide it is frankly the only approach that has been proven to work,” she said. “For many, many decades animal welfare did what we commonly call ‘catch and kill’ where you catch them in traps, bring them in and we would euthanize them. And we are in no better situation than 20 years ago when we started that.
“To me, spay and neuter and management of population is the only outcome that we have to control this, paired with a greater understanding of how to live with community cats.
“They have a place in our community and how to work with them appropriately, that we’re not just doing catch and kill, but we are appropriately managing the population and also recognizing that cats can live outdoors. They’ve done so for hundreds of years.
“It was only since the ’70s since we decided to domesticate them and bring them into our home, make them house pets. Those two things paired together is critical, because if we just spayed and neutered every animal, but the public didn’t understand how to work with them or how to live with them, we would still have a difference of opinion on respecting their lives.”
Politicians need more awareness of the whole problem and the best solutions available to tackle it — sterilizing and colony management — she said to make policies that are not reactionary and counterintuitive to solving the overall problem.
“I understand why they’re making those decisions, because they don’t have all the information,” Mikulsky said. “It is our job as both public residents, animal shelters, to educate our municipal leaders so they can make educated decisions on policies that are actually going to make real change in their community.
“It’s a shame because I think some of these policy decisions inhibit people from working together, which would ultimately help us solve the problem faster. And if we could find a way to rally people together within certain areas with the support of their municipality or whatever legislative body that is or is not making decisions, we could make a lot more impact faster.”
The new CEO is also making a strong effort to reinvigorate, reestablish and strengthen relationships with other shelters and rescues by donating excess equipment and food.
“I’m really big on not duplicating services and having been in the nonprofit space, especially in fundraising for so long, it does not make sense to spread resources so thin when someone else is doing something, so we’ve got to stop doing that,” Mikulsky said. “It is important to me that if someone else is doing something we’re not or in a different way, I want to support you.”
Another focus of hers in the coming year is prioritizing animals in the ARL’s care and getting the best possible outcome for them.
She also announced the ARL will be staffing a mobile adoption unit and clinic that will provide vaccinations and microchips. It will be hitting the road in a few months.
Source: Berkshire mont
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