The RSPCA has vowed to crack down on some of Canberra's worst animal abusers by dragging them before the courts in a renewed push to bring offenders to justice.
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Chief executive of the RSPCA ACT Tammy Ven Dange said the number of animal cruelty complaints investigated in Canberra had jumped substantially in the past financial year.
"We have a number of court cases at the moment because we have had a massive back log of inspector work," she said.
"We are putting a lot of things before the court."
She said RSPCA inspectors had investigated 668 complaints of cruelty in Canberra during the 2012-13 financial year, which rose to 1061 cases in 2013-14 and Ms Ven Dange expected those figures to increase again.
RSPCA inspectors recently discovered a house in the Belconnen area where a man was hoarding more than 160 animals plus fish. They chose to work with the individual rather than prosecute him in court.
"He had many roosters, many guinea pigs, rabbits, rats and mice kept in cages as pets," Ms Ven Dange said.
"We seized 167 animals. He has a mental illness and for us to prosecute that case with mental health issues we were not going to win that one.
"We worked with mental health workers to get him help. We try to help these people. We don't want to be going back there over and over again to seize animals."
Ms Ven Dange said prosecutions were costly for the charity.
"In the past few years an average 1-2 per cent of the complaints investigated resulted in legal action which is similar to (other branches of the RSPCA) across the country," she said.
"We don't prosecute everything just the ones we know we can win."
The animal charity has made redundancies within the organisation to free up funds to create a position for another inspector.
Ms Ven Dange said many people needed only eduction about appropriate animal care in order to change their ways but there were others who were deliberately cruel.
