CAMPAIGNS TO END DEADLY ERADICATION METHODS
ACR advocates for the humane management of cat populations, both feral and wild, and has seen the positive effect of programs such as trap-neuter-return firsthand. Unfortunately, all too often, eradication methods are implemented to attempt to control feral cat populations. Not only are eradication methods cruel, but they are also ineffective.
Campaigns in action:
1) Australia - Government-sanctioned cat killing: The Australian government has been culling feral cats since 2015 in their effort to kill two million. It announced this as part of it's Threatened Species Strategy, claiming that the overpopulation of feral cats on the continent threatens endangered endemic wildlife. However, the government is wrong in both their estimation of the severity of the problem and their plans to solve it. We introduced a petition to be sent to Australia's Minister of Health, Greg Hunt, calling for an end to the culling and the use of humane population control methods such as TNR. The petition has over 94,000 signatures and we will send it to Hunt once we reach the 100,000 mark.
Press Release on our petition to stop culling of feral cats:
Alley Cat Rescue nears 100,000 signature goal on petition to stop killing of cats in Australia
Mt. Rainier, MD - Australia announced a program in 2015 as part of its Threatened Species Strategy, that involves numerous methods of poisoning and shooting cats, with the goal of killing two million cats by 2020. This goal is based on an estimate that there are up to 20 million feral cats on the continent, as well as the belief that feral and stray cats pose extreme danger to the native Australian wildlife they hunt. A closer look revealed there to be no scientific evidence behind the 20 million number and subsequent study has revised that number down significantly, with new estimates putting the number between 2.1 and 6.3 million. Additionally, a study by scientists published in “Conservation Letters,” a journal of the Society of Conservation Biology, concluded that “the cull target is not explicitly linked to direct conservation outcomes (e.g., measured increases in threatened species populations)” (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12633). The extermination of feral cats is thus not only cruel but also lacks any proven benefit for Australia’s native species.
Alley Cat Rescue President and Founder, Louise Holton says, “Australia seems to resort to culling animals as the go-to solution for overpopulation. Australian state governments, shire councils, and municipal governments have approved of bounty hunts on many species such as dogs, foxes, cats, and dingos. Unfortunately, Australia’s aggressive actions often cast a shadow on more effective, less costly, and more humane methods for managing animal populations.”
Although 2020 has passed, the program is still underway and new, inhumane methods to kill cats are being devised, such as a robot that sprays poison onto cats’ fur, as the two million mark has not yet been achieved.
ACR has collected to date over 94,000 signatures, with an end goal of 100,000. The petition is live at: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/111/502/969/stop-government-approved-cat-killing-in-australia-now/?taf_id=62491771&cid=fb_na#bbfb=992051912
About Alley Cat Rescue: ACR is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the welfare of all cats: domestic, stray, abandoned, and feral. ACR advocates for humane nonlethal control of feral cats. ACR has been awarded the Independent Charities of America’s “Best in America” Seal of Approval, and our newsletter has won several awards from the Cat Writers’ Association. For more information, visit their website http://www.saveacat.org.
2) Australia - Feral cat bounty hunting: ACR has advocated against proposed feral cat bounty hunts in Australia. These inhumane proposals seek to reduce cat overpopulation by paying residents to shoot and kill feral cats. Our campaign to stop a proposed bounty hunt in Queensland, Australia was featured on The Guardian, Radio Pet Lady and The Community Cats Podcast. We petitioned the government of Banana Shire, Queensland to end the barbaric bounty hunts and gained over 150,000 signatures from passionate animal lovers.
Press Release on our petition to end cat bounty hunting:
Alley Cat Rescue calls on Australian municipality to reverse community cat bounty
Mt. Rainier, MD—On October 13, 2017 Alley Cat Rescue, An Alliance for Cat Protection, released a petition demanding an end to community cat bounty hunting in Banana Shire, Queensland. The government of Banana Shire has recently announced a bounty for the scalps of dead community cats. Alley Cat Rescue vehemently opposes encouraging individuals to kill community cats and is working to reverse this inhumane and ineffective bounty.
Our petition has reached over 105,000 signatures and counting. Almost 11,000 of these signatures are from Australians themselves. Many Australians have commented that they support trap-neuter-return and concerned about the safety of their pet cat if the cat gets outside. Property owners need to give hunters permission to hunt on their property but cats do not understand property lines and can wander into a hunter’s territory.
Alley Cat Rescue President, Louise Holton says, “Alley Cat Rescue wants to help Australian groups work on humane solutions to cat overpopulation which are far more effective than killing community cats.”
Cat overpopulation is an important issue in Australia that needs to be addressed but a barbaric bounty for the scalps of dead cats is not the answer. A study released this year in Animals entitled “Trap-Neuter-Return Activities in Urban Stray Cat Colonies in Australia” found that TNR coupled with adoptions of friendly community cats significantly reduced the number of community cats while also increasing the welfare of the animals. Another study in Tasmania found that culling community cats actually led to an increase in their population. They stated that this was probably due to new individuals taking over the area after dominant cats were removed. The Australian Veterinary Association is also critical of culling stating, “Control of cats may be extremely costly and result in only temporary predation relief for native animals and birds. Currently available technologies (trapping, shooting and poisoning) are unlikely to achieve eradication. In fact, this can only be achieved within predator-proof enclosures and on islands.”
For more information on Alley Cat Rescue's work please visit: http://www.saveacat.org/ and to sign our petition please visit: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/938/259/677/demand-an-end-to-community-cat-bounty-hunting-in-australia/
About Alley Cat Rescue: ACR is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the welfare of all cats: domestic, stray, abandoned, and feral. ACR advocates for humane nonlethal control of feral cats. ACR has been awarded the Independent Charities of Americas “Best in America” Seal of Approval, and our newsletter has won several awards from the Cat Writers’ Association. For more information, please visit our website www.saveacat.org.
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USDA Wildlife Poisoning: ACR has petitioned the USDA to end the use of deadly poisons such as Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs for predator control and has written many newsletter articles and action alerts to our supporters about this issue. We believe that using toxic chemicals as a form of predator control is not cruel but can often kill non-target animals through direct contact or secondary poisoning (eating the carcass of a poisoned animals). There are documented cases of Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs even poisoning pets and humans. Just like with feral cat management, there are humane management practices that can help mitigate human-wildlife conflicts.
Read our petition:
USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue,
I am writing today to urge your agency to end its use of the harmful and indiscriminate poisons Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs. These poisons are inhumane and kill any animal who comes into contact with them, including wild animals, endangered species, companion animals, and humans.
When Compound 1080 is ingested, it can take an animal up to 14 hours to die while suffering in agonizing pain, experiencing convulsions, vomiting, and finally succumbing to cardiac failure. We have recently seen the tragic effects of such poison following a string of incidents that resulted in the deaths of family pets, including an incident that involved a young Idaho boy. The boy and his dog were playing in their backyard, when an M-44 cyanide bomb went off. Thankfully, the boy survived, but he had to watch the gruesome death of his family dog, and he suffered from severe migraines for months after the incident.
Wildlife Services, run by the USDA, kills millions of animals every year. With over 2.7 million animals killed in 2016, that’s roughly 5 animals killed every minute. According to USDA records, an average of eight dogs a month have been killed by mistake by Wildlife Services since 2000, with almost 11,000 cats killed between 2004-2013. And these are only the documented animal deaths; Wildlife Services employees have admitted to killing animals and burying the bodies to prevent documentation.
Wildlife Services wastes millions of taxpayer dollars by spending far more money to kill predators than the actual damage those predators cause. The agency’s solution to “manage” predators should not be to simply kill them. Taxpayer money would be better spent on nonlethal control methods which are far more humane and effective. No one should have to worry if a government agency is going to inadvertently kill them or their pet when they go outside.
Campaigns in action:
1) Australia - Government-sanctioned cat killing: The Australian government has been culling feral cats since 2015 in their effort to kill two million. It announced this as part of it's Threatened Species Strategy, claiming that the overpopulation of feral cats on the continent threatens endangered endemic wildlife. However, the government is wrong in both their estimation of the severity of the problem and their plans to solve it. We introduced a petition to be sent to Australia's Minister of Health, Greg Hunt, calling for an end to the culling and the use of humane population control methods such as TNR. The petition has over 94,000 signatures and we will send it to Hunt once we reach the 100,000 mark.
Press Release on our petition to stop culling of feral cats:
Alley Cat Rescue nears 100,000 signature goal on petition to stop killing of cats in Australia
Mt. Rainier, MD - Australia announced a program in 2015 as part of its Threatened Species Strategy, that involves numerous methods of poisoning and shooting cats, with the goal of killing two million cats by 2020. This goal is based on an estimate that there are up to 20 million feral cats on the continent, as well as the belief that feral and stray cats pose extreme danger to the native Australian wildlife they hunt. A closer look revealed there to be no scientific evidence behind the 20 million number and subsequent study has revised that number down significantly, with new estimates putting the number between 2.1 and 6.3 million. Additionally, a study by scientists published in “Conservation Letters,” a journal of the Society of Conservation Biology, concluded that “the cull target is not explicitly linked to direct conservation outcomes (e.g., measured increases in threatened species populations)” (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12633). The extermination of feral cats is thus not only cruel but also lacks any proven benefit for Australia’s native species.
Alley Cat Rescue President and Founder, Louise Holton says, “Australia seems to resort to culling animals as the go-to solution for overpopulation. Australian state governments, shire councils, and municipal governments have approved of bounty hunts on many species such as dogs, foxes, cats, and dingos. Unfortunately, Australia’s aggressive actions often cast a shadow on more effective, less costly, and more humane methods for managing animal populations.”
Although 2020 has passed, the program is still underway and new, inhumane methods to kill cats are being devised, such as a robot that sprays poison onto cats’ fur, as the two million mark has not yet been achieved.
ACR has collected to date over 94,000 signatures, with an end goal of 100,000. The petition is live at: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/111/502/969/stop-government-approved-cat-killing-in-australia-now/?taf_id=62491771&cid=fb_na#bbfb=992051912
About Alley Cat Rescue: ACR is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the welfare of all cats: domestic, stray, abandoned, and feral. ACR advocates for humane nonlethal control of feral cats. ACR has been awarded the Independent Charities of America’s “Best in America” Seal of Approval, and our newsletter has won several awards from the Cat Writers’ Association. For more information, visit their website http://www.saveacat.org.
2) Australia - Feral cat bounty hunting: ACR has advocated against proposed feral cat bounty hunts in Australia. These inhumane proposals seek to reduce cat overpopulation by paying residents to shoot and kill feral cats. Our campaign to stop a proposed bounty hunt in Queensland, Australia was featured on The Guardian, Radio Pet Lady and The Community Cats Podcast. We petitioned the government of Banana Shire, Queensland to end the barbaric bounty hunts and gained over 150,000 signatures from passionate animal lovers.
Press Release on our petition to end cat bounty hunting:
Alley Cat Rescue calls on Australian municipality to reverse community cat bounty
Mt. Rainier, MD—On October 13, 2017 Alley Cat Rescue, An Alliance for Cat Protection, released a petition demanding an end to community cat bounty hunting in Banana Shire, Queensland. The government of Banana Shire has recently announced a bounty for the scalps of dead community cats. Alley Cat Rescue vehemently opposes encouraging individuals to kill community cats and is working to reverse this inhumane and ineffective bounty.
Our petition has reached over 105,000 signatures and counting. Almost 11,000 of these signatures are from Australians themselves. Many Australians have commented that they support trap-neuter-return and concerned about the safety of their pet cat if the cat gets outside. Property owners need to give hunters permission to hunt on their property but cats do not understand property lines and can wander into a hunter’s territory.
Alley Cat Rescue President, Louise Holton says, “Alley Cat Rescue wants to help Australian groups work on humane solutions to cat overpopulation which are far more effective than killing community cats.”
Cat overpopulation is an important issue in Australia that needs to be addressed but a barbaric bounty for the scalps of dead cats is not the answer. A study released this year in Animals entitled “Trap-Neuter-Return Activities in Urban Stray Cat Colonies in Australia” found that TNR coupled with adoptions of friendly community cats significantly reduced the number of community cats while also increasing the welfare of the animals. Another study in Tasmania found that culling community cats actually led to an increase in their population. They stated that this was probably due to new individuals taking over the area after dominant cats were removed. The Australian Veterinary Association is also critical of culling stating, “Control of cats may be extremely costly and result in only temporary predation relief for native animals and birds. Currently available technologies (trapping, shooting and poisoning) are unlikely to achieve eradication. In fact, this can only be achieved within predator-proof enclosures and on islands.”
For more information on Alley Cat Rescue's work please visit: http://www.saveacat.org/ and to sign our petition please visit: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/938/259/677/demand-an-end-to-community-cat-bounty-hunting-in-australia/
About Alley Cat Rescue: ACR is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the welfare of all cats: domestic, stray, abandoned, and feral. ACR advocates for humane nonlethal control of feral cats. ACR has been awarded the Independent Charities of Americas “Best in America” Seal of Approval, and our newsletter has won several awards from the Cat Writers’ Association. For more information, please visit our website www.saveacat.org.
###
USDA Wildlife Poisoning: ACR has petitioned the USDA to end the use of deadly poisons such as Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs for predator control and has written many newsletter articles and action alerts to our supporters about this issue. We believe that using toxic chemicals as a form of predator control is not cruel but can often kill non-target animals through direct contact or secondary poisoning (eating the carcass of a poisoned animals). There are documented cases of Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs even poisoning pets and humans. Just like with feral cat management, there are humane management practices that can help mitigate human-wildlife conflicts.
Read our petition:
USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue,
I am writing today to urge your agency to end its use of the harmful and indiscriminate poisons Compound 1080 and M-44 cyanide bombs. These poisons are inhumane and kill any animal who comes into contact with them, including wild animals, endangered species, companion animals, and humans.
When Compound 1080 is ingested, it can take an animal up to 14 hours to die while suffering in agonizing pain, experiencing convulsions, vomiting, and finally succumbing to cardiac failure. We have recently seen the tragic effects of such poison following a string of incidents that resulted in the deaths of family pets, including an incident that involved a young Idaho boy. The boy and his dog were playing in their backyard, when an M-44 cyanide bomb went off. Thankfully, the boy survived, but he had to watch the gruesome death of his family dog, and he suffered from severe migraines for months after the incident.
Wildlife Services, run by the USDA, kills millions of animals every year. With over 2.7 million animals killed in 2016, that’s roughly 5 animals killed every minute. According to USDA records, an average of eight dogs a month have been killed by mistake by Wildlife Services since 2000, with almost 11,000 cats killed between 2004-2013. And these are only the documented animal deaths; Wildlife Services employees have admitted to killing animals and burying the bodies to prevent documentation.
Wildlife Services wastes millions of taxpayer dollars by spending far more money to kill predators than the actual damage those predators cause. The agency’s solution to “manage” predators should not be to simply kill them. Taxpayer money would be better spent on nonlethal control methods which are far more humane and effective. No one should have to worry if a government agency is going to inadvertently kill them or their pet when they go outside.