Thursday 31 January 2013

Stop Estimating Wildlife Killed by Cats!

We have another shocking report that has been hyped up in the press today (31st Jan 2012).  This time Nature Communications have published estimates animal kills by domestic and feral cats in the USA over a year. The figures come from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Photo by Kai Hendry
They say that 3.7 billion birds and 20.7 billion small mammals are killed yearly by cats. However, they constantly refer to "estimates"or "thoughts"...

  • "far exceeds all prior estimates..."
  • "The researchers estimated..."
  • "There are thought to be ....."
We don't know how many feral cats there are the in the USA and by far the biggest "estimated" impact on wildlife comes from feral cats.

How can scientists produce accurate figures if they really don't have any idea about the number of feral cats in the USA? No one has ever done a proper count of feral cat numbers. And what about the benefits of feral cats?

The researchers say that cats kill "mice, voles, rabbits and shrews". They also kill rats. How many rats are killed by feral cats in one year in the USA? No one has addressed that point.

The scientific community and the online newspaper work together in a most disagreeable way to distort the image of the cat and create adverse publicity that encourages the nastier sort of person to up the rate at which they shoot feral cats. It also encourages a devaluing of the domestic cat in the eyes of non-cat owners and irresponsible cat owners.

It really is time that scientists stopped estimating things as important as cat kill rates. It is careless science. The people who write up these reports cannot place any value on the cat. If they did they would not be so careless.

They say, "There are thought to be 30-80million such cats living wild in the US...." One figure is less than half the other! Neither could be anywhere near correct. This is not science. It is journalist nonsense.

10 comments:

  1. This is nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. pretty much. cant stand these kinds of peoples

      Delete
    2. Who can? They need to go and get a life.

      Delete
  2. These so-called "scientists and "experts". They should all admit that in reality, they just hate cats. Never seen any "estimates" about dog attacks, now have I?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed. So biased, these scientists.

      Delete
  3. Nice and slick, you deceiving liars.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So many people commenting in seconds lol.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So I've noticed, lol. They might be camping on the pages to see other people's responses.

      Delete
    2. haha i know i am this is getting interesting -eats popcorn-

      but on the side note i cant believe how stupid and biased these scientists are being. cats killing small prey? so damn what. they're trying to eat as much as they can. were having an overpopulation, hello what do you expect? half of this is the peoples fault for being careless about cats. shouldve participated in the TNR program or something if they didnt want this to happen

      Delete

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