- Stopping residents feeding them at feeding stations. They intend to remove the stations.
- Relocation the colony
- Bricking up access points under the buildings where the cats have made dens.
Wednesday, 30 October 2024
Crisis looms for 100 feral cats occupying Denver apartment complex
Friday, 4 October 2024
North Haven, Connecticut, community in uproar over trapping and euthanizing feral cats
Wednesday, 11 September 2024
US halts plan to remove iconic stray cats from a historic area in Puerto Rico's capital
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US halts plan to remove iconic stray cats from a historic area in Puerto Rico's capital. Image: DALLE. |
“They’re going to have to keep doing this forever,” he said. This legal battle highlights broader debates about wildlife management, community values, and humane treatment of animals.
Saturday, 20 April 2024
Can a resident in Ohio shoot feral cats in their backyard?
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Man in USA shooting feral cats. Image in the public domain (believed). |
"YOU MAY NOT SHOOT THESE CATS!!!!!! With all due respect to my colleagues, this would be a criminal act! Under Ohio law, all cats are considered "companion animals," regardless of where they are. It is a CRIME in Ohio to "needlessly kill" any companion animal. See Ohio Revised Code section 959.131(B). Regardless of the concerns you states in your question, killing would be considered "needless" because there are many other possibilities, including the suggestion that you call Capital Area Humane (one of the finest agencies anywhere, by the way). The first cat that you kill can have you charged with a first degree misdemeanor. The next one would be a FELONY. Do not take the law into your own hands. We have plenty of other options."
Monday, 8 January 2024
Amsterdam joins those municipalities introducing cat restrictions to protect wildlife
- microchip and sterilised their cats
- keep the feral cat population to a minimum
- no longer release feral cats under TNR programs to "ecologically vulnerable areas"
- Ensure that owners place a bell or a collar around their cat's next to make it much harder for the cat to prey on wildlife particularly birds. Comment: the brightly coloured colour, an anti-predation device, is fairly successful (50% success) in warning birds of an approaching cat. However, bells are less successful because cats learn how to keep them quiet! Neither is going to work that well. And I can see difficulties in convincing a large number of cat owners to place a wide, brightly coloured collar around their cats' necks. It looks a bit peculiar and it certainly doesn't look aesthetically pleasing which is quite a big factor in the human-to-cat relationship because caregivers love the appearance of their cat. It is one of the important aspects of the relationship. I'm being negative but perhaps you might say that I am being realistic.
Tuesday, 3 October 2023
Graham Miller shoots feral cats, deer, goats, camels, pigs, foxes, rabbits and kangaroos!
Graham Miller lives in Australia which might not surprise you seeing as he shoots at anything on four legs that bleeds! And he says that, "I don't give a s***what people think if I shoot cats".
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Miller and family. Image as per embedded credit. |
Of course, I didn't expect him to care what people think about him shooting as many animals as possible. He is a professional killer of animals in Australia and he was taught to shoot kangaroos at the age of 10. He clearly has zero sensitivity towards causing pain and probably thinks all animals are automaton-like robots and are not sentient beings.
There is a huge article on him on the Daily Mail website which is crushingly boring except for one or two points. And there's a video on the site with a warning which says that you might be upset when you see feral cats being shot. I find that a bit odd seeing as the whole article is about shooting animals; as many as possible. They use drones to track the animals down.
And after he shots feral cats he likes to hang them up on a makeshift frame (see above). Why did he do this? What's the point of it? Does he get kicks out of it? He probably does. The Daily Mail says that he is credited with saving a local population of black-footed rock wallabies which is South Australia's most endangered mammal.
His business is called Feral Solutions. It's all about killing non-native species which prey on native species. He's one of those guys who thinks that Australians have a duty to eradicate totally all invasive species no matter how long they've been in Australia.
He must have killed thousands of animals by now. He has a lot of guns including a Brno .22 Magnum lever-release rifle which reloads much like a semi-automatic and an Australian-made Taipan pump-action .223. As you can see, he uses a .22 rifle which is a small calibre firearm which is all you need to kill a cat or a goat or a fox or a pig; you name it.
There is one interesting piece of information in this Daily Mail article which is that he believes that feral cats have a range of 11 km. I believe you means 11 km² because when you speak of a range you speak of the home range and that is an area. This is far larger than for domestic cats in the UK allowed outside.
He also, interestingly, states that feral cats don't take the widely used 1080 bait which kills wild dogs and foxes. This is a nasty poison which takes a little while to kill the animal.
Other Australians have created a device which chucks 1080 poison onto cats when they pass by. The cat then licks off the poison and dies. The only problem with it is that if a domestic cat passes by then they die and the authorities have then committed a crime but hey ho no problems.
He says that the biggest cat that he has shot weighed 7.1 kg. That is 15.65 pounds by the way. That's not particularly huge. I say that because a little while ago there were people saying that the feral cats in Australia have become so big that they were monsters. They were claiming that the feral cats had evolved into a new wild cat species. I think not. There are just typical feral cats, most of them tabby cats by the way.
He attracts the cats with a decoy device that emits sounds which include a distressed kitten and squeaking mouse. The curious feral cats are attracted by the sounds leading them into the rifle sights of Mr Miller's .22 rifle.
I think I will leave it there because to be honest it is unpleasant writing about this unpleasant man and his family of shooters. I just don't like this kind of person because he has no conception of really what he's doing. He is just a good shot with a rifle who thinks animals don't feel pain. He needs an education.
Wednesday, 5 July 2023
Paddy Gower doesn't understand why it's wrong to cull feral cat in New Zealand
My take: feral cats are killing native birds, bats and even dolphins - so why are Kiwis so mad when we cull them? https://t.co/ZXbwp7b4GI
— Patrick Gower (@patrickgowernz) July 5, 2023
Patrick Gower is a New Zealand politician journalist and National Correspondent for Newshub. Incidentally, I cannot access the Newshub website on which there is a discussion about killing all feral cats in New Zealand because I am in Europe (crazy I say).
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Paddy Gower. Image: Stuff.co.nz. |
But as you can see from the tweet by Paddy Gower, he doesn't understand why Kiwis (New Zealand citizens) are so mad when the authorities want to cull feral cats because they are killing native birds, bats and even dolphins he says.
The reference to dolphins by the way is this: Toxoplasma gondii oocysts are shed in cat faeces (once and for about 10 days) and they sometimes make their way to the oceans where they can infect marine wildlife. Although it is very, very rare and they have been very few reports of this happening.
It's a reflection of his bias against feral cats. Although I can understand what appears to be his hatred of feral cats. He is passionate about conserving New Zealand's native species as Australians are with their species.
I am going to try and explain to him why Kiwis are so mad at culling feral cats. Clearly these Kiwis are people who are sensitive to the sentience of feral cats. He isn't. He practices speciesism which means he favours one species over another.
He doesn't mind shooting feral cats which causes a lot of pain and distress. Therefore, he doesn't mind being cruel to feral cats. So one reason why it's wrong to shoot feral cats or poison them is because it is cruel.
Perhaps a more important reason is the fact that human beings through their carelessness put feral cats on the planet in the first place. If somebody is careless and creates a problem, they then owe a duty to others to solve the problem in a decent and humane way if that problem concerns animals.
That's logical. That is common sense. Simply shooting and poisoning feral cats is not dealing with a human problem humanely. That's another reason why it's wrong.
And thirdly, when you go out of your way to kill feral cats in large numbers you cannot do it in a way which is precise enough to ensure that you are not killing someone's pet domestic cat. At a distance you can't tell the difference between feral cats and domestic cats.
And if you have devices which chuck poison gel onto passing animals you are going to kill feral cats certainly but you are also going to kill other animals including, possibly, someone else's pet cat.
And it seems to me you might also kill one of New Zealand's native species. Those are three good reasons why Kiwis are mad or should be mad about culling feral cats.
But I'm afraid Patrick Gower doesn't get it. This indicates to me that he is stupid or he is too biased to have an open mind to what's wrong with the proposal to kill all feral cats in New Zealand in any way possible and as expediently as possible.
If you want to kill feral cats kill them humanely and do the decent thing which can only mean euthanising them by veterinarian. That of course is nowhere near fast enough and it will be far too expensive and irritating to people like Patrick Gower to contemplate.
Wednesday, 28 June 2023
Animal advocates say school kids swung around dead cats (they'd shot) in front of them saying "meat, meat, meat"
NEWS AND VIEWS - NORTH CANTERBURY, NEW ZELAND: Animal advocates were present at the North Canterbury Hunting Competition in Wellington, New Zealand. You may have read about this competition in which adults and schoolchildren under the age of 14 go out and shoot wild animals including feral cats. The kids were offered a £100 cash prize for the most cats shot dead! Great.
There was uproar about schoolchildren shooting feral cats. The first problem is that it indoctrinates the children into believing that shooting animals for fun is a good thing. Secondly, you can never be sure that you are shooting a feral cat or a domestic cat; someone's pet.
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Animal advocates say schoolkids swung around dead cats they'd shot in front of them saying "meat, meat, meat". Image: NZ Herald. |
Because of the uproar, 'on the ground' and online, the people who made the rules about the competition said that children under 14 couldn't shoot feral cats in order, I guess, to appease the animal advocates who were protesting.
But the adult version of the events still took place. Adults still shoot feral cats and perhaps occasionally someone's domestic cat companion. There is a photograph online of what appears to be hundreds of animals piled up as the end result of this shooting competition. To an animal advocate it looks disgusting.
But the point of the article is that a group of six protesters at the event were taunted by children who began repeatedly chanting the word "meat" while swinging around dead cats presumably by the tail. Charming.
It's reported that before they did this the children told the animal advocates to go and eat carrots and grass. They added that the protesters were going to die from a lack of protein and iron.
One animal advocate, Sarah Jackson, said, "The first thing we saw when we arrived was children having relay races with the deceased bodies of animals. These included baby pigs, rabbits and possums."
The organisers of the fundraising event said that the protesters had provoked the children. And they justify the shooting of feral cats because of the devastating impact that they have on native species. Comment: that does not address the problem of indoctrinating children into accepting what most people regard as unethical and immoral behaviour. And it does not address the problem about shooting domestic cats by accident.
So, the conclusion from this story is that the children concerned are beyond redemption. The world has lost them to animal cruelty. They will be cruel to animals all their lives and people are going to have to accept it. They've been taught that by their parents and by the hunters and shooters of New Zealand who see nothing wrong with destroying sentient creatures to protect native mammals and marsupials.
There must be a better way. I'm sympathetic about protecting native species but to do it this way is very crude and cruel. And it doesn't really work except to entertain the people doing the shooting. You can't simply eradicate all the feral cats in New Zealand or in a certain area of New Zealand by shooting them. They come back; they breed.
There has to be a far more sensible, efficient, practical and long-lasting solution and of course one which is humane and decent.
Friday, 5 May 2023
Domestic and feral cats are a political hot potato in New Zealand
OPINION: Do you remember the recent furore over the competition for New Zealand's schoolkids in which they had to shoot feral cats with either an air rifle or a .22 calibre rifle (or any other calibre I guess). The competition was pulled because of press coverage and the fact that there were fears that the children would be shooting people's pets because you can't tell the difference between a domestic cat and a feral cat at the kind of range you would be at when shooting at them with a rifle.
RELATED: New Zealand’s junior school kids love to shoot cats for prize money.
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NZ pest controller holds feral cats. This is cruel and unfair on cats. Image: The Press. |
Shooting domestic cats in New Zealand is a serious crime. The organisers were asking kids to commit a serious crime! Thoughtless comes to mind. But the Kiwis have a cruel attitude towards feral cats as is seen in the photos above. It is identical in Australia. The mindset is inhumane and in my honest opinion immoral and crude. It is the kind of mindset which generates the idea of the competition mentioned in the first para.
The idea of the competition itself was ridiculous and it should never have been proposed. But the problem is that animal lovers and animal advocates saw the madness in it and criticised the organisers online and social media. There were some tough criticisms even death threats I believe. And on the other side of the fence, there are those who supported this kind of competition. Society is split on feral cats.
The stuff.co.nz website reports that:
"Several organisations contacted by Stuff said they had views they’d love to share regarding feral cats, but couldn’t do so for fear of being 'personally abused' or 'targeted by crazy cat-lovers'".
You can see the problem. The issue of domestic cats becoming feral cats and feral cats killing wildlife has become a political hot potato in New Zealand as is the case in Australia. It is tricky for a politician to please two factions with such diverging views.
And the article on stuff.co.nz say that the numbers are scary. They said that there is an estimated 2.5 million wild and feral cats in New Zealand. Note the word "estimated". They don't know how many there are. If you don't know how many there are they can't say it is scary! You got to have the facts to hand.
And the same problem goes for estimating the number of native species killed by feral cats in New Zealand. They don't know the numbers.
What annoys me is that journalists like the one who wrote the stuff.co.nz article don't know the facts. No one does. They are all estimates. But they regurgitate them as if they are facts.
The first thing that the New Zealand's authorities need to do is to work out accurately how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. They need to get a handle on the problem. They need to stop speculating.
And the competition I refer to above basically indoctrinates children to hate feral cats. And it might be fair to say that if they hate feral cats, they are going to at least dislike domestic cats and the owners who have them. After all, domestic cats are the source of feral cats.
I don't think it is wise and sensible or indeed fair to indoctrinate children like this. It's important to protect New Zealand's native species of course but you can't do that while being cruel to feral cats which were put there by careless cat ownership. The root cause of the problem is people. The cat is the innocent victim in all this.
Monday, 21 November 2022
Two New Jersey towns support TNR with one trying and rejecting a trap/kill policy
NEWS AND COMMENT: This story concerns a couple of New Jersey, USA towns. One of them is Bayonne, a city in Hudson County and the other is actually described as a borough and it is Matawan. The latter tried to introduce, in a ham-fisted way, a feral cat trap/kill program which backfired badly.
Matawan
The borough administrators introduced an ordinance which said that they were going to trap stray cats and if nobody claimed them within seven days, they would kill them. And in a badly mismanaged way, they said that the Monmouth County SPCA would do the trapping and killing without consulting with them in the first place. And secondly, they employed the local police force to distribute notices about their new but flawed campaign.
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From Facebook. |
It all blew up in their face when the SPCA complained bitterly that they hadn't been consulted and the public rebuffed them. The police had to make a statement to say that they weren't involved in the killing of cats. Clearly, the campaign did the police no favours as it damaged their reputation.
Anyway, the mismanaged campaign, organised by Scott Carew (as I understand it), the borough's business administrator together with the animal control officer and councilwoman Melanie Wang, was abandoned without any stray or feral cats being trapped.
They made a U-turn on realising their error and have decided to introduce a new ordnance which focuses on TNR (trap-neuter-release). That's the way to go. But it took the public and the SPCA to teach them that lesson.
Humane and ethical approach
The public are concerned about feral and stray cats. Some people hate them while others are more sensitive towards their needs. But in general, the public want feral cats dealt with humanely. They realise that careless human cat ownership put them there in the first place and secondly, they are sentient beings. The ethical way to deal with feral cats is TNR. It is the only current way, but it requires a good investment and the involvement of the local authority.
This leads me nicely to another story from the same state, New Jersey, which reports that Bayonne's city council has decided to continue with a TNR program which is managed by the New Jersey Humane Society.
Bayonne
They have consistently put in sufficient funds (it seems to me) to run the program. This is a commitment from the local authority to fund TNR and they're using somebody who they respect, Geoffrey Santini, the city's animal control officer who works at the New Jersey Humane Society, to organise the TNR program.
Mr Santini is described by Bayonne's Municipal Services Director Suzanne Cavanaugh as a "lovely gentleman, and he is excellent at what he does. He is a true partner with the city of Bayonne."
That's how it should be done in my view. You have a city council or county council who are focused on TNR to control feral cat numbers. They fund it consistently and they work with the best people to arrange and manage the TNR programs.
According to the report, in the Hudson Reporter, the city has consistently funded TNR and recently agreed to an addendum to the ordnance to add a further $25,000 to the program. The program commenced, as I understand it, in April 2021 when it was funded with taxpayers money amounting to $54,123.
Comment: perhaps local administrators are realising that TNR is the only way forward. It has its flaws according to ornithologists and others because in essence you are putting feral cats back on the ground where they can continue to prey upon wildlife. But patience is required and consistency. Armed with these two qualities TNR works if funded properly.
It needs to be as widespread as possible to be as effective as possible. It is the only way to deal with feral cats currently until something better comes out such as contraception (drug placed in food) which doesn't work well enough.
There are other instances of councils trying to trap and kill feral cats, but they almost invariably end up with a backlash from the public who complain because, as stated, the majority of the public are against the cruelty of trap and kill policies.
Domestic cats caught in trap and kill programmes
And there is always the potential for killing a person's cat companion. There are still places where there are indoor/outdoor cats, and you cannot tell the difference between a feral cat and an outdoor domestic cat (pre-TNR which ear tips ferals). You don't want to kill someone's pet because that would be a catastrophe and it would open the doors to a criminal charge against the local authority for criminal damage.
Thursday, 22 September 2022
Neighbor from hell threatens to kill the stray cats that I feed
USA: This is about a new neighbour from hell and how to deal with him. It is not an uncommon problem, but it is an almost intractable one and my advice based on a lifetime of experience is to move home.
A social media user is desperate for advice. They say that they bought a house five years ago after much effort and he is pleased that he has managed to secure a safe haven for himself and his family. It has a large backyard and a forested area beyond. Therefore, there is lots of wildlife including possums, foxes, raccoons, deer and groundhogs and even an otter. He enjoys this.
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How do you combat neighbours from hell who want to kill stray cats that you feed, and this is in the country. Image: MikeB |
And there are two neighbourhood stray cats hanging around his carport, so he feeds them every night at the same time that he feeds his three indoor cats.
"At a loss about animal hating new neighbors" - social media user desperate for help.A new neighbour bought the house next door about a month ago. It is clear to him that his neighbour is an animal hater plus a neighbour from hell. For example, his neighbour said that he saw a groundhog in his backyard and that they are going to feed it with food baited with a constipation treatment so that the groundhog shits itself to death.
"Feed it Ex-Lax so it will sh*t itself to death" - neighbour from hellAnd also, the animal hater has told them that they need to stop feeding the stray cats because they scratched his car (probably a lie). The neighbour said that unless they bring the stray cats inside, he is going to kill them.
When they told him that they've been feeding the stray cats for years he said that he didn't care.
As a consequence, they called the police non-emergency number, but they said that there is nothing that they can do because the cats are stray and also because the neighbour from hell hasn't actually done anything yet. Typical police, negative response. They could have at least spoken with the man.
Then they decided to bring one of the stray cats inside, but this made her miserable and the resident cats were also unhappy as expected. The other stray cat gets into fights with other cats and is a genuine feral and they can't get near him.
They want to protect the two stray cats but don't know how to do it except to keep an eye on them. The trouble is that he works and can't protect the cats 24/7.
To sum things up, the man (65 years of age) is seeking advice and has been living in a property for five years and his new neighbour hates animals and is threatening to kill stray cats that he feeds.
My advice
My advice on social media was very negative advice and one that I feel that many people would reject but I think it's the right one and it is this: to move home. I know that sounds awful but when you live with a neighbour from hell you can't beat them.
Well, you can probably beat them in the end after an awful lot of argument and possible litigation but when you have achieved that you've actually lost because you are then living next to a person who hates you and will probably do all they can to make your life miserable for years.
As soon as you enter into a major dispute or long-term disputes with your neighbour even if that dispute was caused by their bad behaviour, there is no reasonable answer to the problem except to get out and move on.
In fact, my experience tells me that under the circumstances you should not complain about your neighbour from hell's behaviour. You should not talk to them. We should not do anything other than move home quietly.
If you complain about them and put in formal complaints to the local authority or whatever it has to be declared when you sell your home, and it will put off potential purchasers.
Neighbours from hell are irrational. And therefore, it's impossible to deal with them rationally. It's impossible to make progress with them. It's impossible to negotiate or discuss things with them because they want to dictate terms from the onset. Therefore, you either accept what they say, or you get out.
I guess there is another outcome which is to let the madman kill the cats but that is probably less acceptable than moving home. And in any case, you are left with living next to a neighbour who is a complete nuisance and likely to be a nuisance about something else in the future.
Thursday, 30 December 2021
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) misleads their readers regarding the feral cats of Kangaroo Island
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation have a headline, today (Dec 30, 2021), on their website which I would strongly argue is very misleading and deliberately so. They state that hundreds of feral cats have been "removed" from Kangaroo Island in a bid to protect endangered native species.
It is the use of the word "removed" which I believe has been deliberately chosen to paint the authorities in a better light that should be the case. These feral cats have been removed, yes, but they have been removed because they've been killed. This is actually mass slaughter. The authorities are killing feral cats in their many thousands. It has been going on for a long time. However, it is the first time I've seen this kind of language used which distorts the true picture.
Of course, as usual they refer to feral cats as 'pests'. It is rather strange because in some countries feral cats are not regarded as pests but as community cats. The Australian viewpoint is a very negative.
How do you decide if an animal is a pest or not? Well, I would argue that they have labelled feral cats as pests because they kill native species. To restate that in a different way: the behaviour of feral cats leads to the death of native species. And so they call them pests.
On that criterion, they would have to call themselves pests because humans in various ways kill more native species than feral cats. You won't find any information or hard facts on it. It is an estimate from me. But that is not a bad thing because all the numbers about the killing of native species by feral cats in Australia are estimates anyway.
There is one particular method of killing feral cats which they delight in. In another example of a distortion of the truth and heavily biased reporting, they describe the Felixer as a "trap". It is not a trap. It is a device which chucks 1080 poison onto passing feral cats. They groom themselves and ingest the poison and die a painful death.
RELATED: Picture of feral cat Doomsday Machine.
There is no way on God's earth that you can call this device a trap. Nothing is trapped. It just kills feral and stray cats. It also kills domestic cats and other animals but it is designed to feral cats only. How effective is it?
They persist in calling this feral cat poison a trap and that it is five times more effective than a standard cage trap. Standard cage traps do not kill the cats. Cage traps are not designed to kill cats but to trap them after which they can be sterilised and returned under a TNR program or in the worst case scenario they can be euthanised in an humane way.
The Felixer simply poisons animals. There is no attempt to kill the cats humanely under this scheme. Whether it is humane or not is entirely irrelevant to these people.
Wednesday, 11 August 2021
New Zealand's kids report on GPS tagging of feral cats followed by killing them
NEWS AND COMMENT - NEW ZEALAND: It's reported by a news web site under the umbrella of the stuff.co.nz website, called Kea Kids News, that the authorities in New Zealand, who are constantly at war with the feral cat, are going to GPS collar tag some feral cats, track their movements and then kill them.
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Feral cat with GPS collar. Image: Simon Stevenson. |
It's just another way of finding out what feral cats do and where they go so that they can be better managed. However, by "management" of feral cats they invariably mean how to kill them more efficiently. If you know where they are and what they do you can track them down and kill them in any way that is suitable at that moment. Shooting is probably a favourite. Forget the pain it causes.
I think the news is worth passing on partly because this is a news channel run by kids, as I see it. So, it is children who are stating this and doing so without any discussion about the moral issues. There is no discussion about whether it is fair or unfair, cruel or humane, ethical or unethical and so on.
If kids think that feral cats need to be killed and only killed then there is little chance that anything else will happen to them except the killing will probably be cruel like shooting. When these kids grow up, they'll be doing the killing. And they will pass the idea to their kids and so over generations they will be indoctrinated into believing that feral cats are dangerous pests and vermin which have to be eradicated at all costs.
There are other ways of dealing with these animals. These children should realise that it is humans who put them there in the first place. Their existence is the fault of people. And the gradual demise of many of New Zealand's native species is also the fault of people through habitat loss. New Zealand's dairy industry has been wreaking havoc with local biodiversity owing to unsustainable practices.Saturday, 7 August 2021
4 scientists deserve praise for saying the truth about feral cat predation in Australia
- Arian Wallach, Lecturer, Centre for Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology Sydney;
- William S. Lynn, Research Scientist, Clark University;
- Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison and;
- Joann Lindenmayer, DVM, MPH is an associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University
Tuesday, 27 July 2021
Australians use thermal imaging cameras and rifles to conserve bilby and kowari populations
It is reported that bilby and kowari populations in Queensland's outback are increasing to the delight of conservationists thanks to a more efficient feral cat control programme which includes using thermal imaging cameras and, I presume, rifles to kill them. Both these animals are marsupials and they've spotted them in greater numbers this year. The bilby is endangered. The Department of Environment and Science recorded 471 bilbies at Astrebla Downs National Park.
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A bilby in Currawinya National Park makes its way to its burrow. Photo: Cassandra Arkinstall |
They also spotted a record 14 kowaris. This is a small carnivorous desert marsupial regarded as vulnerable in terms of conservation in Queensland.
They put the increasing population numbers down to better control of feral cats. The Department said that they have removed more than 3,000 feral cats from the park since 2013. As mentioned in the title, they use thermal imaging cameras rather than spotlights to pick out the cats.
This has made killing them far more efficient. The news report does not tell us how they kill the cats but it has to be by shooting. If they're using thermal imaging cameras to spot them then the next step is to shoot them. Of course, it doesn't matter how they kill them and one of the most common ways is poisoning. The next most efficient method of shooting. It is raw slaughter. The issue of causing pain and suffering is irrelevant.
Apparently, the cats got used to spotlights. They learned to avoid them as they were associated with death, but thermal imaging has outfoxed them. A senior ranger, Barry Nolan, said: "Once the earth loses its heat that it got from the sun during the day, anything that provides body heat glows quite well under thermal technology, even if it's behind vegetation and stuff."
The video shows the bilby:
Friday, 23 July 2021
Extinction of mammals on islands by introduced domestic and feral cats
When the predation of wildlife by feral and domestic cats is raised as a topic the devastating impact of cats on islands is invariably a major issue. Wildlife species on islands are particularly vulnerable because they are isolated from many of the diseases, predators and parasites that plague mammals on the mainland.
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Stewart Island - Photo: Getty Images / tsvibrav |
Dr. Bradshaw states that island species account for 83% of all documented extinctions of mammals. However, scientists can only implicate feral cats in the destruction of wildlife on these islands in about 15% of such extinctions. And further, within that 15% of such extinctions to which the blame is only the feral cat, other introduced predators should take their share of the responsibility according to Bradshaw in his book Cat Sense.
He says that mongooses, cane toads and especially rats are equally if not more devastating than feral cats on wildlife predation. Black rats a.k.a. ship rats, it is claimed, can do more damage than any other introduced predator. It is ironic, therefore, that it may be beneficial or there are at least some benefits to not slaughtering feral cats because cats are reasonably effective hunters of black rats according to Dr. Bradshaw.
If you attempt to exterminate feral cats (as is currently the objective of Australian legislatures) you might find that the outcome is far worse than imagined in terms of the population of black rats. He cites the example of Stewart Island off the coast of New Zealand. On that island feral cats have existed for more than 200 years with an endangered flightless parrot called the kakapo (owl parrot Strigops habroptilus). The cats mainly fed on the introduced species of the brown and black rat. Those species of rat have been held responsible for the extinction of several other species of birds in the same area.
Removing the cats in these places might lead to an increase in the rat population which in turn might lead to the extinction of the kakapo.
That's just an example because sometimes eradicating cats from an island can lead to a dramatic recovery in the population of certain vertebrate species. Bradshaw cites examples such as iguanas on Long Cay in the West Indies. Also, deer mice on Coronado Island in the Gulf of California.
Although, there is no doubt that the sheer number of feral cats in most places must have a significant impact on wildlife. The difficulty, as I see it, is quantifying that impact and the way that ornithologists and their organisations latch onto biased or estimated predation rates in rather poor studies to further their agenda which is to in effect kill large numbers of cats.
Friday, 11 June 2021
An alternative to killing feral cats in order to protect wallabies
Historically, Australian authorities kill feral cats to protect native species which includes wallabies. It's understandable but it is a negative solution particularly when the killing is carried out with a complete disregard for the pain inflicted.
The Daily Science website reports an alternative method which I would like to disseminate in the interests of the welfare of feral cats. They say that a program called "head start" doubled the population of the critically endangered bridled nail tail wallabies in the Avocat Nature Refuge in Queensland. What they mean by this is that they protect the young Wallabies against predation by feral cats until they are adult enough to be able to escape and survive.
Specifically, the researchers placed individual wallabies weighing less than 3 kg together with their nursing mothers in a 9.2-hectare enclosure which was free of predators except for birds of prey and some other predators, which are unspecified. They allowed them to live there over a three-year period beginning in 2015.
The mothers raised 56 wallabies in the enclosure and they found that the head start program more than doubled the population of wallabies over three years. There are 16 core members which increased to 47 of which 21 were inside the head start enclosure and 26 were outside. The survival rate of young wallabies increased, in that 15/20 juveniles (75%) survived past the age of weaning in the enclosure compared to only 3/12 (25%) in the wild.
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Wallaby. Photo: Science Direct. |
The researchers have estimated that the Avocet wallabies will become extinct within two years but for the head start program. They said that until they have a way to eliminate feral cats in the wild the head start program is a good idea.
I've written a lot about Australia and suggested many other ways of controlling the feral cat population size other than brutal killing in any way possible. If you are interested you can read some of these articles by clicking on this link.
Monday, 3 May 2021
Argument over trapping and killing vs trapping, neutering and releasing
In this instance, it seems without notification, Brooklyn and Parma Heights Animal Control published a Facebook post about its policy to trap and euthanise feral cats. It was published last Tuesday apparently and then deleted. I believe that it was deleted because of the comments underneath the post by the citizens of that community.
Essentially the Facebook post said that the authority's policy was to trap and humanely euthanised all intact feral cats (see below). They also said that they "will attempt to relocate ear-tipped cats". What that means is that those cats which have been part of TNR programs and therefore have been ear-tipped will be treated differently and that there will be an attempt to relocate them.
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Facebook post on Brooklyn and Parma Hts Animal Control policy on feral cats introduced without consultation. Screenshot. |
I think that you can guess what they said. One veterinarian in the area said that it seemed as if the clock was being turned back. Her name is Danya Linehan and she said, "I felt like I'd been thrown back about 30 years. It's been a very long time since I've seen anyone propose a solution of rounding up and killing cats to the overpopulation problem since we've been so successful with what we call TNR."
Another, Michelle Pierce, the owner of a Cleveland-based TNR rescue, said that trapping and killing is not a permanent solution and in any case other cats come into the area after the original ones have been killed. It is no solution at all whereas TNR stabilises the colony and stops them reproducing. It also stops nuisance behaviours and gradually the population dies out.
The problem with TNR for many residents is that it is too slow a solution. And that's why the local authority steps in to try and produce an instant solution and that can only be killing.
Another obvious problem which constantly returns is that it is almost impossible to be absolutely certain that you are trapping a feral cat and not someone's pet. When you trap a domesticated cat they sometimes behave like feral cats which means that under the policy proposed by Animal Control they end up being killed which is the crimes of criminal damage and theft under the law of America if you wanted to pursue that course of action. You may struggle to get the local police to act upon that and you may struggle to get the authorities to prosecute themselves on that but it would be a crime nonetheless.
The article on the Cleveland news website 5 ABC NEWS 5 CLEVELAND has been updated to tell us that on Thursday, Brooklyn and Parma Heights Animal Control said that they have suspended trapping feral cats "momentarily". Clearly they have observed and understood the reaction their policy. I hope that they take stock and try the more common sense route which can only be TNR.
I said at the beginning that they did not consult with residents. Any authority wishing to trap and kill feral cats as a solution would be wise to consult with the community first because you need their approval and their involvement because, as mentioned above, there will be outdoor domestic cats. They need to be inside if the authority is trapping outside. More important than that is that you have to seek the agreement of residents that feral cats can be killed and many of them will disagree.
The argument outlined above is one which recurs constantly in America. It is a problem based upon patience. TNR requires patience while killing is near instanteous. The former is a long-term solution. The latter is a quick but flawed fix which does not last.
Tuesday, 16 February 2021
Brutal Australians playing God after they screwed up over feral cats
Going back to the beginnings of the settlement of the continent of Australia we can see the origins of today's so-called feral cat problem on that continent. Those early settlers were careless with their cats. They let them roam and they left them behind when they moved. These are the foundation cats of what the 'experts' believe are millions of feral cats today in Australia.
And it bugs the hell out of Australians. Not all Australians, but the conservationists, cat haters and those want to protect their cute native species which they prefer the look of. It's a heavy dose of speciesism and it is playing God. It is preferring one animal over the other and it is a rearguard attempt to correct the disastrous errors of the past.
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A western pygmy possum trapped in the area of proposed killing of feral cats. Credit: see image. |
But in doing this they quote information about feral cat predation on native species in Australia as if it is written in tablets of stone but it isn't. It is guesswork. They don't know how many feral cats there are in Australia and therefore they can't work out how many native species are killed by the animals. So give us a break please Australian conservationists.
And in playing God I don't mean creating something beautiful or even ugly. I mean the painful destruction on a grand scale of feral cats. That is what playing God means in this instance. And we are told today that one of the nation's biggest conservation groups has decided to work with the Western Australian government to put down poison bait to kill foxes, feral cats and rabbits as well. They want to restore the native animals to their traditional domain in the words of the journalist on The Age website.
They are targeting a conservation area of 5,000 acres owned and managed by Bush Heritage Australia. We have heard it before; feral cats have a big negative impact on the sustainability i.e. survivability, of particularly small marsupials, reptiles and snakes.
The Western Australian government has been baiting the areas that it manages for a long time but the proposed programme increases the baiting area by a factor of five and it's going to target rabbits, foxes and cats simultaneously.
They use a familiar poison called 1080 which is designed specifically the cats apparently. The project will last five years and cover 40,000 hectors. Then intend to protect pets and working dogs "as well as possible". That is a point of contention. It is accepted that some pets will be killed. They say that the poison degrades quickly after rain and it is not toxic to native animals. I'm not sure how that works to be honest. It is made from plant species found in south-west Western Australia.
And then the journalist quotes the usual figures saying that feral cats kill 272 million birds, 466 million reptiles and 815 million mammals annually. They quote the source as the WA Biodiversity Science Institute. Well, I'd like to know where that institute gets their numbers from. Yes, we know feral cats kill native species but you can deal with the matter in a less brutal and more humane way by, for example, using TNR programs which will take much longer and I would propose genetic engineering about which I have written recently in which you can read about by clicking here.
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