Gerald McGrew wrote:This should be an interesting discussion...
I live in a rural area just outside of town. To get go my place, you have to drive through a short tunnel, down a gravel road, and through some woods. This means our area is a very popular location for drop-offs of all sorts, including unwanted cats. Our local animal shelters have stopped accepting stray cats, so we can't take them there. I will not neuter and release them because of the damage they do to songbirds and other wildlife. And we simply cannot adopt them due to their sheer number.
So I shoot them.
Of course I take every precaution to make sure they're truly strays (no collars or tags, and I ask around to all the neighbors first to make sure it's not theirs). Still, it's not something I enjoy, but given the millions of stray cats in this country and the toll they take on wildlife, I feel it's something I have to do.
Well in the case mentioned in the story, this was a pet cat not a stray, and there was absolutely no way the individuals involved had wildlife conservation anywhere on their minds when carrying out these acts; Indeed I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if they also target wildlife.
As for situations where the impact of feral cats (or any invasive species) on wildlife is an issue, it could be argued that unless it is done as part of an thorough and organised official scheme, shooting individuals has very little, if any, long term effect in any case (unless you're dealing with a small population on, say, an isolated island; in which case you may as well just trap them anyway). Whereas although a neutered-and-released individual may kill wildlife during their lifetime, they also act as competition for un-neutered individuals, and thus reducing the size of the next generation.
Of course none of this takes into account the effects of the population being freshly topped-up by newly abandoned individuals; clearly however you think feral cat problems should be dealt with, this is the problem that must first be addressed.
But I digress; the individuals that targeted this cat were plainly not wildlife heroes wishing to protect songbirds; they were vile subhuman vermin of the kind who also find
this kind of thing a good laugh.
