In the past I have been very critical of Australia in their attitude towards feral and stray cats. In some parts of Australia they shoot feral cats and they wantonly and recklessly blame the feral cat for wiping out native wildlife without taking responsibility for the accepted fact that people cause by far the most environmental damage and loss of native wildlife or people create the most imbalance in the natural order of things.
However, credit must be given where it is due and Australia has local legislators that are far more enlightened in their policies concerning how to reduce the numbers of cats killed in rescue centers etc. than those in other parts of the world.
They are doing the obvious, really and tackling the problem at source, namely irresponsible cat ownership.
One example is the City of Swan, which is "a Local Government Area of Western Australia. It is located in Perth's north-eastern metropolitan region and the Swan Valley..." (Wikipedia). In short it is near Perth or a part of Perth, a major city on the west coast of Australia.
The lawmakers of this region of Australia are taking the only steps possible to bring under control the excess of domestic cats in the region. This excess is not due to the cats but due to people failing to exercise sufficient control of what they do in relation to their cat caretaking and management.
The legislators of the City of Swan have prepared draft legislation (a bill) - Cat Bill 2011 - that makes it obligatory for cat caretakers to register, spay (females) and neuter (males) and as I understand it microchip their cats (identification).
The big issues, and I am sure they have considered this carefully, is how to effectively enforce the law. It will place an extra burden on local government employees and there will be a cost. Perhaps the cost can be passed on in part to cat "owners".
If the bill is made into law it will be introduced slowly which is sensible and not come into effect until 2013.
There should be plenty of patience as this is a fundamental change in people's habits. People are used to absolute freedoms in relation to cat caretaking the world over. Unfortunately it is time to exercise some regulation because a significant minority of cat caretakers have demonstrated that they cannot meet the requirements necessary for the well being of cats and community alike.
Source: Cat-free zones to go if new law passed
From Australia leads way in dealing with stray cats to Home Page
However, credit must be given where it is due and Australia has local legislators that are far more enlightened in their policies concerning how to reduce the numbers of cats killed in rescue centers etc. than those in other parts of the world.
They are doing the obvious, really and tackling the problem at source, namely irresponsible cat ownership.
One example is the City of Swan, which is "a Local Government Area of Western Australia. It is located in Perth's north-eastern metropolitan region and the Swan Valley..." (Wikipedia). In short it is near Perth or a part of Perth, a major city on the west coast of Australia.
The lawmakers of this region of Australia are taking the only steps possible to bring under control the excess of domestic cats in the region. This excess is not due to the cats but due to people failing to exercise sufficient control of what they do in relation to their cat caretaking and management.
The legislators of the City of Swan have prepared draft legislation (a bill) - Cat Bill 2011 - that makes it obligatory for cat caretakers to register, spay (females) and neuter (males) and as I understand it microchip their cats (identification).
The big issues, and I am sure they have considered this carefully, is how to effectively enforce the law. It will place an extra burden on local government employees and there will be a cost. Perhaps the cost can be passed on in part to cat "owners".
If the bill is made into law it will be introduced slowly which is sensible and not come into effect until 2013.
There should be plenty of patience as this is a fundamental change in people's habits. People are used to absolute freedoms in relation to cat caretaking the world over. Unfortunately it is time to exercise some regulation because a significant minority of cat caretakers have demonstrated that they cannot meet the requirements necessary for the well being of cats and community alike.
Source: Cat-free zones to go if new law passed
From Australia leads way in dealing with stray cats to Home Page
Comments
Alyssa- coolproducts.com
There are about 150M feral-cats in the USA, 86M pet-cats (60M of which are allowed to kill all wildlife). Cat numbers are oversaturated for a long time. There's only 311M people in the USA. 2 cats for every 3 people, infant to senior. All thanks to those who promoted their random-chance trapping programs. TNR people claim trap and kill is also a failure, and they'd be right. The problem has always been the trapping, slowing things down far below cats' breeding-rates. An average litter of 5 new cats every 5-6 months (some say 3 times a year), breeding as early as 6-months of age. 2 cats can become 42 (up to 252) cats in only 1 year. No amount of trapping will ever catch up to their growth rate. You now have an ecological, health, animal-welfare, and financial disaster on your hands. They need to be SHOT-ON-SIGHT to even begin to approach their growth-rates. As I alone successfully accomplished on my own land.
Once you have claimed ownership of these cats through your actions, do you carry enough liability-insurance for all the damages YOUR CATS will do (not if) when you release them? Or for all the health-care costs YOUR CATS will cause to all humans with all the diseases YOUR CATS now carry? Like Toxoplasma gondii, which becomes a lifelong illness once YOUR CATS infect a human with it. Or, should one of YOUR CATS contract rabies during its lifetime because you were unable to trap it again to vaccinate it. How many $MILLIONS in liability-insurance do you carry if one of YOUR RABID CATS should bite a human? How about anyone who has lost business due to YOUR CATS running off customers because of the diseases they spread everywhere? Like what happened in Miami where YOUR CATS spread hookworm on all the beaches where YOUR CATS defecated. Can you repay everyone for their $MILLIONS, if not $BILLIONS, in losses of health, life, business, and property? Do you even know what the charge is if YOUR CATS are found destroying endangered plant or animal species? How much money for damages will you pay to the person whose wildlife you've completely decimated on their woodland property? Do you have enough money to pay for any daily or weekly land-use fees that people will be charging you for you using THEIR LAND for YOUR CATS? Usually all done without anyone's permission I might add. Are you even aware that what you are doing falls CLEARLY under the definition of "Biological Warfare"? No lie. Do you want to be tried in court and charged with this crime against all of humanity and all of nature?
Are you doing all of this completely irresponsibly without regard to the health and welfare of any other animal nor human life? If so, have you considered you could be thrown in prison for a long long time for all of this extremely criminal and irresponsible behavior of yours?
You might want to start thinking about these things. Your actions DO have consequences, and those are consequences that you may not enjoy ... for the rest of your miserable, unthinking, uncaring, inconsiderate, and wholly disrespectful cat-loving lives.
Those cats that have learned to avoid and evade all trapping methods are the next generation to survive. Ever hear the old adage, "If you invent a better mousetrap nature will just invent a better mouse."?
So now, thanks to the supreme stupidity and ignorance of trap-advocates, we have a race of freely roaming cats in all countrysides of every continent which are passing on their "how to survive" behavior to all their offspring, both genetically and behaviorally. Now the next phase of millions of feral-cats won't even be able to be trapped. This is just how amazingly stupid trap-advocates are. You thought 150,000,000 feral cats was bad? In colloquial terms, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!"
There's a reason the phrase "hunted to extinction" is so well-known in all cultures across all lands. It is the ONLY method that is faster than a species can breed and adapt to.
Stick that in your TNR-pipe of deceptive and deceitful ignorance and smoke it. You might as well, because you all have obviously been smoking something.
I wasted 15 YEARS of my life arguing with demented cat-lovers. During which THEIR CATS DESTROYED ALL WILDLIFE ON MY LAND.
It wasn't until I STOPPED arguing and did what needed to be done -- SHOOT ALL CATS -- that my land, all the wildlife on my land, and my life itself started to return to normal. I no longer have to go out twice a day on cat-patrol to shoot more cats nor waste more time and energy burying them to protect wildlife from the diseases they carry.
I hope the rest of you learn from this lesson. You can argue with the Toxoplasmosis parasites in the cat-lovers' brains until you are blue in the face and your whole planet is destroyed by their cats, but it'll never get rid of the cats that have destroyed your life and all wildlife.
JUST DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE -- DESTROY THEM.
Only later, AFTER your land and life are 100% free of cats, can you have fun educating the ineducable. Use the time you got back from their cats taking over your life to share the best ways to destroy all cats. (Without harming any other wildlife nor humans.) Then if you want, make YOUR life THEIR problem. Just as they made THEIR cats YOUR problem for all these many years. It's only fair! Because that's what it's really all about, it's not about cats at all. THEY ONLY WANT TO CONTROL YOUR LIFE WITH THEIR CATS. You can put a stop to that immediately BY DESTROYING THEIR CATS. And there's not ONE THING they can do about it if you do it right. They'll no longer have any part of your life.
If you want to raise revenue for your towns and cities in order to deal with this invasive-species ecological-disaster properly, start charging all these TNR advocates with severe fines and imprisonment for CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. Not only are they cruelly torturing cats, but also all the wildlife that they inflict their cats upon.
They're not doing this out of any goodness of their hearts. THEY DON'T HAVE HEARTS. Proved, 100%.