Holly Help fund needs donations

It’s hard to get excited about recycling aluminum cans, because one can generates about a half-cent while millions of dollars are needed to really address the problem.

But Sue Williams, the chairwoman of the Holly Help Spay and Neuter Fund, believes that every bit of progress is worthy of note, even if it’s a half-penny at a time.

So far in 2009, the fund has spent about $35,000 to spay and neuter about 12,500 cats and dogs in the region spayed or neutered. As of last week, the fund, which relies on grants and community donations, was out of cash.

Readers have been troubled, angered and some claim to have been sickened by this newspaper’s coverage of the animal overpopulation problem and the fact that it leads to routine euthanasia in animal shelters. So take your emotion and get behind the root cause of the problem. When animals aren’t sterilized, it leads to overpopulation and the grim work that goes on at animal shelters: Perfectly suitable pets being killed to make room for the flood of new arrivals.

The only way to stem this tide is to put increased focus on sterilization.

When Williams told us that her fund ran out of cash, it seems a perfect time to encourage people who feel inclined to “do something” about animal overpopulation to put their money where their mouths are. Donations to the Holly Help Spay and Neuter Fund are tax deductible and are used locally to sterilize animals adopted from local shelters. Williams estimates there are more than 300,000 dogs and cats in the Southwest Virginia-Northeast Tennessee region that are not sterilized. If the cost for each surgery was $50, the total cost would be $15 million.

A staggering amount, clearly, but Williams believes any effort toward reducing the numbers of unwanted pets helps. That’s why she is proud her group spent about $35,000 to sterilize more than 12,500 animals this year. “When I tell people we helped spay 12,510 animals, it’s with the knowledge that 300,000 still need help, but every bit we do is a contribution to the larger problem,” she said. “It’s almost 13,000 animals and that’s 13,000 more than none.”

That’s also why Williams routinely picks up the aluminum cans donated to her group at Ferguson Animal Hospital on Anderson Street in Bristol. And the recycled ink cartridges dropped off in support at Cornerstone Ink on State Street. Williams knows it is tiny amounts toward a larger goal, but she earnestly believes in the goal.

For readers who want to help, make a tax deductible gift to the Holly Help Fund at P.O. Box 1264, Bristol, Va. 24203. More information is available at http://www.hollyhelp.org or by calling (276) 466-5375.

Of course there are many worthy animal organizations working in partnership with Holly Help, but this local sterilization group has run dry. If you are bothered by the euthanasia that goes on in local shelters, consider Holly Help’s slogan: Saving Lives by Preventing Births.

And offer to help them.