Thanks, I’ve been wanting to say something to you for a while but I just didn’t know how to get my idea across without being preachy. I'll just say my piece and see what happens.
Most Kossaks, indeed most liberals, heck most Americans, consider themselves fairly conservation minded. If you’re like me life is a series of compromises. We drive but we try not to drive a gas guzzler, we recreate in the mountains but we don’t drive off road on alpine tundra.
Cats are another one of those compromises. Yes they eat up some food that takes oil to grow blah blah blah, but they also provide invaluable companionship and a window into an animal world that extends to all other living creatures on the planet.
I like cats outside, cats hunting, cats catching mice and birds and snakes just like little lions and bringing them back to share. You watch a cat stalking and it’s a miniature of the mountain lion.
Sometimes I’ve bought my kids those stupid plastic power rangers or little cooing dolls for my girl. They just end up in the landfill, so much oil. But at least I’m aware. It’s in that context of being aware that I want to talk about cats a little.
Every day cats in the US kill hundreds of times the number of birds killed during the months long environmental disaster of the Deepwater Horizon blow out. That’s every day. Every day hundreds of Deep Water Horizons for birds. A million birds a day.
The IUCN is the international organisation tracking species threats in a scientific, non political. manner. When I read on their web site that a species is in danger I believe it. They are scientists. They lists cats at the very top of their list of invasive species, the very worst.
House cats have made species go extinct, they threaten dozens more. Not just birds either, but rodents and even that sea otter in California. (a pathogen in feces)
But none of this is what really has me worried. Species come and go, there are many birds in the world.
What does worry me is that given a choice, liberal, educated, scientific, professionals would choose to ignore the devastating affect of feral and half feral outside cats. Rather than face up to the fact that wildlife professionals need to sometimes euthanize feral cats people will fight tooth and claw, and spend thousands of dollars avoiding a world they wished didn't exist. Somehow in our protected lives we’ve come to abhor the thought of death so much that we have a difficult time accepting that sometimes a beautiful wild (feral actually) animal needs to be put down. Despite the expert advice of wildlife biologists people support the Trap Neuter Release programs springing up in municipalities with affluent human populations across the United States. (TNR stands for more than The New Republic)
What worries me is what this portends for wildlife management in general. For eighty years now we’ve based wildlife management on science, perhaps Leopold’s greatest gift to future generations. Emotion based wildlife management is exactly the wrong direction to head in this time of reduced habitat and global warming.
http://issuu.com/...
http://www.nwf.org/...
Do you have a cat? Would you be willing to put a bell on it’s collar or even better keep it inside? Would you support euthanizing feral cats or other invasive or overpopulated species? We don’t have the option of “just letting nature take it’s course” In our dwindling amount of wild habitat, stressed by encroaching humans as well as increasing temperatures from climate change we will need to carefully manage the habitat and species remaining.
Using science as the basis for professional wildlife management is one of the cornerstones of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.