Column: The Natural View; The truth about feral cats, 5 reasons supporting colonies is wrong
What would you think if the U.S. Department of Interior announced a sweeping program designed to destroy native wildlife found on federal property? What would you think about a plan to introduce exotic predators to devastate native small bird and mammal populations and further spread infectious disease around human habitation?
I bet you would think the government had lost their mind. You would hope the Department of the Interior had the opposite agenda. And luckily they do, because one of the greatest threats to our native wildlife in the U.S. is exotic, introduced species and the related spread of wildlife infectious diseases.
So why would a group at USU support a program to attract, feed, and sustain exotic, predators that exact a devastating toll on local wildlife?
USU employees are behind a program to trap, vaccinate, spay/neuter, release and continually feed feral cats on campus. Although vaccinating and sterilizing sounds well intentioned, what are the scientific facts about feral cats in our local environment?
Cornell University researchers estimate there are 60 million pet cats in the U.S., with at least another 35 million feral cats roaming wild. Using an extremely conservative estimate of eight birds killed per feral cat, per year – feral cats are killing a minimum of 240 million birds annually in the U.S. Most researchers guess the number is much higher. In total, both feral and pet cats are estimated to be killing at least 500 million birds annually in the U.S.
After considering the impact to bird populations, bird hunting opportunity, and avian research losses, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates the financial cost of this cat inflicted loss of bird life to be around $17 billion annually. Of course this does not include estimated costs of infectious disease control and further impacts to our native small mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
Those animal welfare advocates supporting feral cat populations claim cats play an important role in rodent control, replacing a native predator niche formerly occupied by feline species such as the bobcat.
Here are five reasons why this assumption is tragically wrong:
1) The U.S. already suffers from a human-caused explosion of small predators such as raccoons and foxes that have expanded their ranges, thriving in high densities around human population centers with disastrous effect on native wildlife; especially ground nesting birds, amphibians, and reptiles.
2) By feeding and vaccinating feral cats, people are removing them from the factors that normally limit native predator populations such as natural disease, predation, and competition.
3) A related point; in the event native prey populations decline, their natural predators will also decline. So when humans feed feral cats, they survive independent of available prey, allowing for an increasing level of hunting pressure on declining wildlife species (even fat cats kill birds), sometimes resulting in the outright extinction of native species (seen in many Pacific islands).
4) Unlike wild cougars and bobcats, feral cats do not maintain large and distinct territories, resulting in extremely high cat densities in food rich areas – again inflicting greater than normal pressure on local small birds and mammals.
5) Intense cat predation on field mice and voles indirectly impacts native birds of prey dependant upon healthy rodent populations for survival.
Animal welfare advocates assume feeding, vaccinating, and sterilizing feral cats will eventually result in a stable and harmless population, where all cats have been rendered “safe.” However, vaccinations can expire over time and many parasites can re-infect a treated animal and be transferred to pets or even humans.
Also, the easy source of food will continually draw a never ending stream of immigrant feral cats from surrounding areas, completely overwhelming any well meaning effort to control breeding and infectious diseases in one location. (Currently, there is no effective vaccine for avian flu; one of the first documented cases to arrive in Europe was in a feral cat.)
In the end, the safest and cheapest way to control mice and rats is to use basic trapping and poisoning techniques in and around those campus facilities effected. The only good place for domestic cats is indoors. Sorry, I know its great to have an outdoor cat but it inflicts a heavy toll on our local environment.
Instead of promoting the destructive effects of feral cats, USU and Logan City should order their officers to methodically live-trap and euthanize every feral cat they can find; it’s easy and there’s no good reason not to. I know it sounds harsh, but why trade in our native wildlife and infectious disease controls – all for an introduced predator from Egypt? However, if USU has to go trap, vaccinate, and sterilize feral cats, fine … just please don’t feed them – after all, how can feral cats be simultaneously starving and multiplying.
Comments and questions can be sent to jmgoodell@cc.usu.edu.