Since a young age I have had an innate love for wildlife;
geese cackling on their way to new climes in the night sky, the teeming life of
a marsh, fish gliding under the clear surface of calm waters, even the antics
of backyard squirrels. As someone who values nature and wild animals I
sometimes take an overly self-righteous stance on topics. One of these is feral
cat populations and the damage it does to wild reptile, mammal, and bird
populations.
I must preface this with the fact that I have somewhat of a
distaste for cats. I think most people can be lumped into cat-lovers or
dog-lovers, I definitely fall into the latter. I’m not sure if it is their
fierce independence or their volatility. Certainly affecting this lack of
compassion is the number of birds reportedly killed by cats annually. Cats and
their tendency to kill are a real problem.
Part of this problem is domesticated feline’s apparent lust
for blood. Any cat owner knows that their cute little kitty is really a natural
born killer. The predatory skill of cats has obviously not been breed out over
the years of domestication. Felines’ ability to stalk and snag fast flitting
prey is astonishing. This ability coupled with their bad habit of killing prey
just to kill makes them a force to be reckoned with in the natural world.
The estimated 70 million feral cats in the United States
have an immense potential to kill not withstanding the millions of “pets” that
are allowed to roam free. The number of birds killed by cats is guessed to be
between 50 million and 50 billion annually. That alone gets my blood boiling. Cats
have been known to predate on endangered species and have been the sole cause
of several extinctions. This is particularly common when cats have been
introduced to islands that were preciously devoid of mammalian predators. One
of the better known cases occurred on Stephen Island where a single cat
allegedly wiped out the remainder of the world’s population of a small species
of wren. Along with birds we must consider the number of unaccounted reptiles
and small mammals. With evidence showing the damage cats cause I feel few can
argue that depredation by cats is not a serious problem.
The next question is what can be done about the problem. Is
sterilization the answer? An all out assault to eradicate cats throughout the
country? These and all other imaginable solutions have obvious barriers to
their implementation. It is unlikely that all feral cats could be eradicated,
cats are weary animals and their numbers are too high. Even the eradication of
local populations, say for instance in areas where endangered species nest,
would be time consuming and costly. A real and legitimate question is if any
management plans would have any impact on depredation by feral cats at all. If
it was possible to eradicate wild cat populations fierce opposition would be
expected to most management and there are clear emotional ties between the
species and humans. Many people could never imagine trapping and destroying
cats whether they are concerned with the ecosystem damage they cause or not.
Although a real solution to the problem is implausible one thing is for
certain, cats will continue predating and damaging native fauna for years to
come.
1 comment:
I completely agree with you on this subject, and I believe that feral cats are a problem. I have seen them first hand take song birds from my bird feeders back home. Something more needs to be down about this problem, otherwise they will continue to climb in numbers. Didn't some sort of regulation get passed not to long ago, where you are able to shoot cats without collars or something like that?
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