Best Friends Animal Sanctuary: Sixteen Hundred Lives in Angel Canyon
Near Kanab, Utah
Five miles north of Kanab, in a canyon called Angel Canyon, sits the largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the United States. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary occupies about three thousand seven hundred acres of red rock terrain, with tens of thousands more acres leased from the federal government, a sprawling campus where on any given day up to sixteen hundred cats, dogs, horses, birds, rabbits, and pigs are living in a home between homes, waiting for adoption.
The sanctuary was founded in nineteen eighty-four by a group that had its origins in a British religious community established in nineteen sixty-six. The community moved from England to Florida, then to Arizona, and finally to property in the canyon north of Kanab, which they purchased after one of the founders stopped in town during a nineteen eighty-two road trip and inquired about land for sale. They began building the refuge in February of nineteen eighty-four. The religious community gradually evolved into a nonprofit dedicated entirely to animal welfare. In nineteen ninety-one it was reorganized as a tax-exempt charity, and in two thousand three it became Best Friends Animal Society.
The organization runs adoption and fostering programs across the country, operates regional adoption centers in major cities, and has been a leading voice in the no-kill movement in American animal shelters. The sanctuary's long-term goal is to make the United States no-kill for companion animals by ensuring every healthy and adoptable animal in every shelter has a path to a home. The canyon north of Kanab that a road-tripper noticed in nineteen eighty-two became the base camp for one of the most influential animal welfare organizations in the country.
