What is the Coachella Valley?

(Revised 6-9-06)

Animal Welfare in the Coachella Valley Changed dramatically in Jan. 2006 when the new Riverside County Shelter opened... http://www.riversideshelter.com/thous.htm This new facility is state of the art and provides services for unincorporated areas of Riverside County and contracts with the cities of, Cathedral City, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage. Palm Springs and Indio provide all of their own animal services. The new facility has quickly become the "lead agency" in efforts to get every companion animal microchipped www.riversideshelter.com/pdf/pe42406.pdf 

So where are the boundaries for the Coachella Valley you ask? .... Well that depends who you ask.... It can cover an area as small as the Desert Cities from Palm Springs to Indio or as large as a 2 county region taking in land from  Beaumont to Blythe, a distance of over 150 miles. It sometimes also includes High Desert communities in San Bernardino County up to 29 Palms.

Back in 1999/2000 when 'MicroChip the Desert' was first proposed a definition of  "I-10 corridor from Banning to North Shore & to include the "High Desert" cities up to 29 Palms. The problem is, this covers geography in two separate government regulatory entities, San Bernardino County and Riverside County. This issue will probably never be fully resolved & discussions with both counties has never produced a full plan for microchipping. However if current legislation before the US House and Senate is enacted, Microchipping may be mandatory Nationwide (Spring 2006).

Much discussion about "How far would a pet roam?" & "What cities were centrally located in the valley & what is their population density?" played a role in defining the "Coverage Area" for the initial project. Keeping the number of cities smaller made the project more manageable and left open the idea of "Optional" registration for nearby communities.

Specific outreach to "Snowbirds" ( Winter Tourists) who are not permanent valley residents to encourage them to participate in the chipping and registration process was discussed. 

Discussions were also undertaken to address "Commuters" who may be driving from out of area to work and shop in the Coachella Valley. It is possible that their pets could be become lost and would have need to be registered in the Data Base.

The need to define the Coachella Valley comes into play when you get ready to define a database for matching MicroChip #'s and owners. One of the best ways of doing this is by using Zip Codes and then increasing the search by adjacent Zip Codes until a match is found. Using a Zip sorted database allows for tracking the number of registrations by city and thereby providing demographic information on the success of any implemented MicroChip program. 

Any Database used to match Chip #'s and owners is only effective if it is somehow made available to all animal welfare, governmental, shelters, law enforcement, etc. on a 24/7 basis. In today's world of communication technology the only viable way of doing this is via the World Wide WEB. However, that said, it will also be critical to have this database available to emergency service organizations in a disk format so that searches can be done at remote sites during a disaster.