The Bottom Line in all of the scapegoating of cats is...

So the anti-cat folks say:

1. “Allowing free-ranging pet and feral cats to roam outside, breed unchecked, kill native wildlife, and spread disease is a crime against nature,” says Michael Hutchins, executive director/CEO of The Wildlife Society (TWS), North America’s scientific organization for professionals in wildlife management and conservation.
2. “There is no perfect answer. But, in my view, the best answer is to encourage cat owners to keep their beloved pets safely indoors, to support legislation (such as leash laws for dogs) that requires pet owners to keep their cats indoors or to allow them outdoors only in enclosed catteries, and to phase out TNR cat colonies, which can become magnets for unwanted pet cats and which send the message that it’s OK to allow large congregations of cats to range freely outside and kill wildlife.”
3. The Wildlife Society believes that TNR colonies are dumping grounds for unwanted pets.

Let’s take a look at #1: We (the TNR advocates) do NOT allow free-ranging pets to roam outside. We do adoptions of dumped cats and unwanted cats and tell everyone they have to keep the cats indoors.

Still on #1: TNR advocates do NOT allow feral cats to breed unchecked. Many of us (myself included) have spayed and neutered 20,000 feral cats and some of us even more, over the last 20 years.

#2: Local governments looking for quick fixes for the feral cat “problem” never concentrate on TNR or low cost or free spay /neuter of pets. It’s easier to say “legislation, leash laws, feeding bans.” None of these help feral cats in any way. Also #2: TNR eventually does phase out feral cat colonies. I personally have seen the demise of feral colonies I have fixed.

#3. TNR does not cause dumping of unwanted pets.I have worked in animal rescue for several decades. If people want to dump their animals, they dump them anywhere. We have had cats dumped in parking lots, on highways, anywhere you can think of. Some new cats do enter these colonies, but caretakers are vigilant and immediately notice any new cat that does manage to enter ---either by knowing all the cats, or identifying them through their eartips. They will catch these new cats and get them fixed or if the cats are tame, remove them for adoption.

Examples given by Best Friends on colonies that have been reduced through TNR:

ORCAT Project
According to the Grayvik Animal Care Center, approximately 350 stray/feral cats live in the Ocean Reef Club, an exclusive island community just south of Miami. ORCAT (Ocean Reef Club Animal Trap neuter release) is a program that was established by Ocean Reef’s homeowners in 1993 to care for the cats. Since its inception, this TNR program has reduced the community cat population from around 2,000 to 350 cats.
Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association
A dissertation by Felicia Nutter, published in the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association (2005), evaluating TNR management programs found that a controlled study of TNR and non-TNR colonies showed that within the first two years, all TNR colonies decreased in size by an average of 36 percent, and one went extinct. Within the same time period, all non-TNR colonies increased in size by an average of 47 percent. After seven years, all TNR colonies had five or fewer cats, while the non-TNR colonies continued to increase in size. Immigration into both TNR and breeding colonies was consistent but occurred at low levels in both.
And the following statement by Veronia Lennon  is what I like to call “The Bottom Line”

In 2008 Veronica Lennon wrote the following (and I believe this is the bottom line in all of these endless debates and continuous scapegoating of cats):

The American Bird Conservancy and other avian organizations like the National Audubon Society continue to fund, endorse and advance a simplistic anti-cat campaign that does not address the real issue.

Just "keep your cats indoors"? There are millions of homeless felines that do not have that option.

If the American Bird Conservancy and "Cats Indoors!" campaign supporters were intellectually honest, they would attempt to address the problem of feline overpopulation in a meaningful way. Since they reject trap-neuter-return, here are some other ideas on how they could help:

-subsidize spay/neuter clinics

-fund research for feline oral contraceptives

-start a fleet of spay/neuter mobile units

-urge bird lovers to adopt shelter cats

-donate money to existing cat sanctuaries

-stop distributing false information and harmful propaganda

If avian advocacy groups are serious about addressing the issue of feline overpopulation in a humane way, they should prove it. They should stop wasting money on propaganda and divisive tactics and do something effective to solve the problem.

Perhaps Bryan Kortis, Executive Director of New York City's Neighborhood Cats, a group whose mission is "to make TNR a fully understood, accepted and practiced method in every community," said it best: "Ultimately the wildlife and TNR organizations want the same thing — fewer feral cats. The wildlife organizations have no realistic way to get there. We do."

Louise Holton
Alley Cat Rescue
Box 585, Mt. Rainier, MD 20712
301-277-5595
National Free Feral Cat Spay Day is on April 27th. Get your veterinarian involved in helping to save lives!
http://www.saveacat.org/programs.html
http://alleycatrescue.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18444404708&ref=ts

Can we win for the cats, and help save birds as well? Yes, we can!

I am convinced of this. Even among all the naysayers and the multi-million-dollar environmental groups that oppose our work, I still think we are on the right path! The cats need defenders, they deserve to live, and they deserve to have someone fight for them. We are their only voice. And by sterilizing stray and feral cats, we are (and for decades have been) saving cats’ lives through nonlethal control, reducing the numbers of outdoors cats in a scientific and humane way, thus helping birds and wildlife as well.

Are cats hunters? Are cats carnivores? Do cats kill birds and wildlife? Do we, the TNR people, care about this?

A resounding YES to all of the above.

Cats do hunt---but this is a complex issue. Not all cats hunt. And most cats catch rodents not birds. They are built to be rodent specialists.  And yes, TNR people who support the cats do care about birds and other wildlife. I love all creatures. I rescue and save earthworms from the pavement during rainstorms and I rescue and relocate spiders to places where they will be safe. I only kill mosquitoes, flies and fleas. Nothing else.

The real issue, as wildlife biologist Roger Tabor put it, is whether prey populations can sustain the predation.

On continents, prey species have survived predation for centuries. In fact “The State of the Birds Report 2009” states: “The urban/suburban indicator, based on data for 114 native bird species, shows a steady, strong increase during the past 40 years…”

FOLKS, THIS HAS TO BE HIGHLIGHTED:  IT IS A MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THE CAT PREDATION AND BIRDS-IN-DECLINE ISSUE.

 The truth is that most feral cats live in urban and suburban areas, and yet urban birds continue to increase. The truth is that in feral cats have a propensity to scavenge from human trash, plus of course when humans see them scavenging, they put out cat food. Plus the cat is a rodent specialist and even when he has to hunt to fend for himself, small mammals are much easier for him to catch.

Now, having been shown clearly that bird populations in urban areas have been increasing each and every year for 40 years, and for years before that urban birds population numbers remained the same, do the evironmental groups ever point this out?

Let me see: They extrapolate and exaggerate the numbers of birds killed by cats, and they do not make anything of the fact that urban bird populations are increasing, even though most of the “millions” of feral and outdoor strays live in urban environments?

I am thinking that perhaps they have another agenda? An anti-cat bias?

This is sad not only for cats but for birds as well.

Recent research by David I. King of the USDA Forest Service Northeastern Research Station and John H. Rappole of the Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center points scientists in a different direction in the search for the cause of bird declines. While many scientists worry about loss of breeding habitat, the evidence gathered by King and Rappole indicates that the blame may rest more with destruction of the tropical habitat where the birds spend winters.

In Tropic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature, editors John Terborgh and James A. Estes show how numerous studies have highlighted the perverse consequences that can result from  “nuisance control”: the unleashing of even worse nuisances (i.e.mesopredators). For example control of raccoons in Florida to protect sea turtle eggs paradoxically resulted in increased predation on the eggs because another predator, the ghost crab, was released from control by raccoons.

And a poisoning program recently on an island in Alaska's Aleutian chain, intended to save native birds from introduced rats, has caused the death of more than 420 birds, including 46 Bald Eagles.

The rodenticide brodifacoum was applied and caused the death of Gulls who ate the bait, and then Bald Eagles died from eating the Gull carcasses.

This is not an isolated case. This has been happening in islands for many years.

According to Australian environmentalist Frankie Seymour, lethal control of “alien” animals does not work. She says: “Reducing a population of mislocated animals is a complete waste of time (and money) unless you are prepared to keep on reducing it—killing and killing and killing, generation after generation after generation. The moment you turn your back for a year or a season, the population will return to full occupation of all available niches.

“Lethal competitor animal control methods are about temporary concealment of problems. They exist to provide farmers with an on-going excuse for rural mismanagement, and governments with an enemy they can blame instead of addressing the real causes of environmental and ecological degradation.”             

 How can we really help birds? 

1) Reduce your paper and wood consumption-- use cloth bags for shopping

2) Reduce your oil consumption --start a carpool--ride your bike-- take mass transportation.

3) Reduce your beef consumption--especially fast food & processed beef to save rainforests.

4) Hold businesses accountable-- for practices that are socially or environmentally destructive.

5) Support sustainable farming--support The ‘Fair Trade’ movement

6) Buy “Bird-Friendly” (Shade-Grown) coffee, bananas, and chocolate-- grown under the canopy of trees instead of clear cutting.

7) Plant a garden for Birds--blackberries and wild cherries--dogwoods, spicebush, conifers, bayberry, hawthorns, crabapples, sunflowers

8) Rescue and TNR all those stray and feral cats in your neighborhood. Get your neighborhood involved in a Spay/Neuter Marathon to get homeowners’ cats fixed.

Killing and shooting feral cats??

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A report that recommends killing feral cats as a way to control the animals, including a primer on how to shoot a cat, is stirring emotions among bird and cat lovers.
The University of Nebraska at Lincoln's study found that neutering or spaying is ineffective at eliminating feral cat colonies, though useful in reducing colonies' expansion.
One official from the American Bird Conservancy calls the report "a must read" for communities with a feral cat problem.
But critics note the wild cats help control rodent populations, and say habitat destruction, herbicides and other issues are a bigger threat to birds.
They also question the report's finding that feral cats' killing of birds costs the U.S. $17 billion, when accounting for how much bird watchers, hunters and others spend on the hobbies.

From Louise Holton, Alley Cat Rescue : Feral cat TNR DOES work

First go to Vox Felina's webpages and read about how these so-called "studies" on cat predation are all flawed and exaggerated. Secondly, TNR DOES work. I have TNR'd many colonies during the last 20 years that no longer exist today. The cats all died eventually---some at 12 to 15 years old. (so much for "feral cats live short, miserable lives".)
The thing is they (the anti-cat folks) look at a couple of colonies who still have cats in them 15 or so years later, and say TNR does not work. The truth of this is the U S is a CONTINENT and we have no laws or even ways of implementing any laws to force people to sterilize their housecats. Nor can our animal control agencies keep up with people abandoning cats, so colonies will have a constant influx of new animals. But in every colony on a college campus, or any of the colonies the anti-cat people cite, the numbers are down from around 1,000 to even 2,000 cats to 500 or less.
Thing is: THEY will not listen. THEY have made up their minds that feral cats are Invasive, alien, exotic pests (even though cats have been living in the U.S. for over 500 years in a feral state) and have taken over as Mesopredators as we killed all the larger predators such as wolves and cougars.
Every study shows that even if cats rely solely on hunting, rodents are their main prey. A small number of cats become "bird specialists" but for the main part, actually feral cats live in cities and urban areas, and their main source of food is HUMAN GARBAGE.
ALSO....Only on small islands have they been able to eliminate feral cats, and some islands took 16 years (Marion Island) to do this, and other islands (Macquarie) became a disaster zone after they eliminated feral cats. So how in the heck do they plan to wipe out millions of cats on a Continent? And what will happen to our cruelty laws? So you are then allowed to go out and shoot any cat at will? What about pet cats??
I could write a book on this topic, but don't want to go on too much. Let's finish with a warning from Dr. John Terborgh in his book "Tropic Cascades": Dr Terborgh warned that eradication of cats alone on islands could result in a release in the rat populations and intensify bird declines. Now imagine the rat populations exploding on continental USA?
Dr Lilith in Australia found that protecting and restoring the habitats of declining native wildlife may be MORE IMPORTANT than simply controlling where pets can go. She said there was a popular perception that cats were the main problem in conserving small mammals, but vegetation and ground cover density appear to be a more important issue.

More on NOT feeding feral and stray cats

Director of Montgomery County Resource Center Mark Kumpf said leaving food out for the stray cats on the street is a bad idea. "Animals are not particular as to the food they eat," he said. "You may think the food you set out is going to be consumed by the stray cat, while wildlife such as a raccoon could be consuming the same food."
Mark, the former President of the National Animal Control Association, seemed to be pleased some time ago when he announced that NACA would support some TNR for feral cats. Alley Cat Rescue members sent him a ton of mail to request that he ask animal control agencies to stop feeding bans as they do nothing to deter colonies of cats, and in fact are quite cruel and inhumane.
He never responded to our members, as far as I know.
Now how can you “support” TNR and then tell people NOT to feed? Feeding is the start of trying to control stray and feral cats. You feed first, then, when the cats are in a regular feeding pattern, you start trapping to bring them in for spay/neuter/shots and you remove the tame cats and find homes for them.
Perhaps someone can tell me if they don’t find the stance of Mark Kumpf to be a little of an oxymoron?
Am I using the word in a wrong context here? Perhaps I am, but I don’t know what else to say when someone says "Yes lets TNR the cats, but DON’T feed."
Here is what someone had to say about an oxymoron:
“An oxymoron (plural oxymora or, more commonly, oxymorons) (noun) is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms (e.g. "deafening silence") to make a point. Oxymoron is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull" or "dumb" ), which means the word is an oxymoron. Another, similar oxymoron is sophomore, meaning "wise fool".
I don’t think I need to say more. This says it all for me!