And from our friends at the Houston Chronicle!
Rolling to the rescue
City Council grants funds to mobile spay-neuter program. Will Houstonians step up?
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 29, 2008, 9:58PM
Houston's epidemic of stray animals is notorious nationwide. Though records at BARC, the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Control, are chaotic, past Chronicle calculations put its euthanasia rate from June 2007 to July 2008 at a sickening 73 percent.
Spaying and neutering is the one rational way to stop this expensive and needless butchery. SNAP has led the way on this, running spay/neuter clinics and a free, mobile animal surgery unit that visits low-income neighborhoods. Residents in these areas typically have little money for spaying and neutering (which costs about $100). Just as importantly, many people don't grasp the cruelty, drain on their own local resources and health risks of failing to neuter animals.
SNAP vans roll into neighborhoods, educating residents and performing a day of surgeries for as many pets as they can accommodate. The nonprofit typically takes in about 23 animals in a morning, then treats, watches and returns them to their owners by 4 in the afternoon. The rolling units can fit in about half the requests they get for each visit, said veterinarian James Weedon, SNAP operations director.
One half of City Council's grant allots $50,000 a year for SNAP mobile units over five years, in the form of $20 subsidies per surgery. SNAP raises money to cover the rest. The mobile unit currently neuters about 5,000 area animals every year. The grant will allow SNAP to add about 2,500 more animals to that number. By way of comparison, a mayoral task force said the city's five major shelters killed 77,000 animals in 2005.
In other words, council's grant recognizes that preventing strays is both humane and fiscally responsible. But it won't come close to curing our epidemic of stray animals or to ending their relentless slaughter in shelters unless more city residents take action.
The other half of the grant, which amounts to an additional $50,000 per year, acknowledges this limitation. These funds can go to a mutually agreed-upon project by SNAP and BARC to maximize their spaying/neutering efforts. One possibility, Weedon said, might be a BARC neighborhood sweep to pick up strays, followed by the mobile unit to operate on pets.
This is good government: paying in prevention while requiring initiatives to stretch tax dollars furthest. Nevertheless, this $50,000 a year is trifling next to the waves of animals Houston sends to their deaths every day. Trifling, that is, unless those funds are matched by personal action.
Spaying/neutering one's own pet, helping SNAP educate others or urging local celebrities to publicize spaying/neutering — all could help as much as money to end the daily slaughter.
A recent video by singer Sarah McLachlan prompted $30 million in donations to the SPCA. Houstonians, prominent or ordinary, surely can find their own ways to demand decent treatment for animals in our city.
For more information about SNAP: www.snapus.org.
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