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The essay discussed in this post can be found here: https://aeon.co/essays/ecologys-war-on-invasive-species-isnt-science We at Alley Cat Rescue love the new essay “Conservation Prejudice” by science philosopher, Carlos Santana. Santana bravely argues against the common presumption that a non-native species has a harmful effect on an ecosystem. And then he exposes the “double standard” that most conservationists have in how they think problematic introduced species should be dealt with versus problematic native ones.
Santana reveals the truth that many introduced species are blamed for the decimation of native wildlife and plants and labeled “invasive” without scientifically gathered data to support those claims. Citing the findings of biologist Patricio Pereyra et. al, Santana writes, “how a species is framed in the scientific literature is independent of evidence of harm. An alien species we know little about is just as likely to be framed negatively as one that has been implicated in driving extinction.” Santana terms this tendency “nativist bias” and (we were happy to see), he illustrates nativist bias with the example of Australia’s treatment of cats and foxes: "For instance, the majority of Australia’s modern mammal extinctions are usually blamed on invasive cats and foxes. The biologists Arian Wallach and Erick Lundgren recently went looking for the data that supports this view, and found that, for 70 to 80 per cent of purported cases, no such data exists." This echoes what Alley Cat Rescue has been saying for a long time; we don’t have the data to judge the effect outdoor cats have on most prey species, and therefore environments, around the world. In some cases, an introduced species may integrate into an ecosystem and have a positive impact on that ecosystem. That proved to be the case on both Marion Island and Macquarie Island, for example, where the cat populations were culled through great expense over many years only to result in an actually problematic explosion in mouse and rat populations. In addition to his logical arguments in favor of data-driven assessments of the impact of introduced species, Santana presents a moral argument against culling nonnative populations - even those that are proven to be harmful in some way. He brings up the excellent point that people do not extend the same compassion to invasive species that we do to troublesome native species that cause conflict. When native animals threaten local agriculture, for example, conservationists devise humane ways to mitigate the human-wildlife conflict. On the other hand, nonnative animals are more often added to target lists and killed. Yet the cause of every one of these situations is human expansion. The animals, no matter their location of origin, are blameless. We encourage all critical thinkers to read Carlos Santana’s essay. And if you know someone whose horizons it might expand, share it with them! Cats and other persecuted species need more allies!
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Who hasn’t wished that cats could live as long as most people do? Yet there’s a special gift in loving a cat through every stage of her life—and being there for her as she grows old and needs your care much like she did when she was a kitten. Tips for Helping Aging Cats Thrive
No animals experience higher rates of suffering and mortality in shelters than kittens. The younger the kitten, the worse the outlook. Newborn kittens (four weeks and younger) have very little chance of surviving in a shelter—even when they’re with their mother. Housing many cats in close quarters, with new arrivals coming in daily, gives infectious diseases a chance to spread like wildfire. Newborns have virtually no immune system, leaving them defenseless against every virus or infectious agent in their environment. And if the mother cat gets sick, her kittens will almost certainly catch whatever she has. Even older kittens (up to about six months of age) remain highly vulnerable as their immune systems are still developing.
Newborn kittens brought to shelters without a mother cat have almost no chance of survival without immediate intervention from a volunteer foster or rescue. Shelters simply don’t have the staff or resources to provide the intensive care unweaned kittens require: being bottle-fed every few hours, kept warm, and even stimulated to go to the bathroom. From the shelter's perspective, the most humane option is often euthanasia unless a rescue steps in within just a few hours of the kittens’ arrival. Here at Alley Cat Rescue, we pull kittens from shelters as often as possible. During kitten season, we push our manpower, space, and budget to the limit to save as many lives as we can. Some of the kittens we take in arrive in terrible shape—badly injured, severely ill, dirty, or dangerously underweight. Moochi and her eight little ones, for example, all became sick in the shelter and needed urgent help. It took many sleepless nights, hand-feedings, and emergency vet visits to stabilize the entire little family. As private citizens, we are limited in what we can do to transform shelter systems. But we can take meaningful steps to prevent the animals most at risk—like kittens and nursing mothers—from ending up in shelters in the first place. Widespread sterilization is essential to stopping suffering before it starts. A large part of this effort must continue to come through trap-neuter-return (TNR) of community cats. Organizations like ours carry out TNR on a large scale, but individuals and groups of neighbors can also save lives by sterilizing cats in their own communities. Fixing a single community cat helps far more than just that one animal; it prevents entire litters from ever being born into dangerous circumstances.  There is no question about it— trap-neuter-return (TNR) saves cats from suffering and dying. Cats who have been TNR’d face far fewer risks to their health than unsterilized, unmanaged community cats. The even more significant effect of TNR is that it prevents community cats from producing kittens, 75 percent of whom probably will die and suffer from painful diseases before reaching six months of age.
When we at ACR drop off a feral cat, secure in the trap, to be fixed at a clinic, our main feelings are of happiness and optimism. We know that in a few days, she will dash out of the trap, back to her outdoor home where she has the greatest chance at living a long, comfortable life. A breakthrough contraceptive shot for female cats is showing a lot of promise. The shot uses gene therapy to stop the ovaries from producing eggs and so far, it does not appear to cause any side effects. The positive implications of a single-injection sterilant for female cats go even beyond benefitting sparing the cats from surgery. Females make up around half the outdoor cat population. If they could be sterilized in just minutes at the trapping site and by the trappers, that would be a huge step forward in ending cat overpopulation. There are some practical hurdles and downsides to nonsurgical contraception. The shot is believed to remain effective for about two years, maybe longer. That will be good for pets, and could certainly enable shelters to ensure all female cats are sterilized prior to adoption. However, to be useful for community cats, the sterilization must last for the lifetime of the cat. Community cats who receive basic daily care, as all should, can live well into their teens. Another complication may be finding a way to identify cats who have been sterilized. We would need to find a replacement for ear tipping that is painless but also permanent and easy to see. One possible solution, proposed by the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs (ACC&D) is a tattoo patch, done with microneedles. The tattoos have been tested on a group of 97 dogs and cats and, according to the ACC&D, have not faded within the first three months, which is encouraging. TNR pioneer, Dr. Julie Levy, has pointed out that cats sterilized by injection would still be susceptible to mammary and other cancers and diseases of the reproductive system that often occur in cats.* This must be a consideration for all cats, including pets. And, Dr. Levy reminds us, the hormonal behaviors of cats in heat, such as yowling, would also remain an issue. Nonsurgical sterilization could be a TNR gamechanger. However, there are significant barriers to its use in community cats. It has taken two decades and teams of scientists to develop an injectable sterilant. If it does become commercially available, the torch must be passed to veterinarians and the TNR community, so that we find a way to make the sterilant work for the cats whom it will benefit the most. ------------------ *Reference: Grimm, David. “Hello Kitty, Goodbye Kittens? Gene Therapy Spays Cats Without Surgery.” Science, 6 June 2023, www.science.org/content/article/hello-kitty-goodbye-kittens-gene-therapy-spays-cats-without-surgery.  From the Desk of Louise Holton
There’s an army of outdoor community cat caretakers all across the world. The kind-hearted people who go out in all types of weather, rain, snow, ice and heat to feed and to monitor their colonies. I have been so fortunate over the years since I started this quest to advocate for humane, nonlethal treatment for feral cats to meet people in the United States, Greece, Italy, London, Portugal, South Africa and elsewhere. These are unsung heroes. They form one of the most amazing groups of people out there, some using their own money to trap and sterilize outdoor cats. And to buy cat food, and build cat shelters so the cats have safe, warm, dry places to hunker down in. Who are these cats and why are they living in alleyways behind restaurants, on college campuses, army barracks, and on the streets? These are cats who have been abandoned by humans, cats who find themselves living on the streets through no fault of their own. Alley Cat Rescue shows you why catch-and-kill, advocated by some environmentalists, simply does not work. And we share with you our many years of experience helping these cats. We have developed resources on our website to help others help cats. We have spent time and energy building a directory of low – cost spay/neuter clinics, and CAT groups across the country who can lend you a trap or offer other resources to help people help cats. These are the people in the trenches actually putting into place programs that decrease numbers of outdoor cats by stopping the breeding, and not turning cats into scapegoats, blaming them for bird and wildlife extinctions. Some environmentalists concentrate on cat predation, turning cats into scapegoats, and ignore the real reasons for animal extinctions: habitat loss, which poses the greatest threat to wild species. Our forests, plains and lakes are cleared to make way for agriculture. Mainly animal agriculture but also for industrial development, road building as well as building houses and shopping malls. In a recent paper, Driscoll, Macdonald, and O’Brien wrote: “The world’s species are going extinct at a rate 100–1,000 times faster than the historic ‘‘background’’ rate, primarily as a result of habitat loss, which is itself overwhelmingly driven by conversion of natural habitats to agriculture. The consequences for the planet (as well as for humanity and its domesticates) have been profound, and have included the complete transformation of almost every natural ecosystem on Earth.” Dr. Julie Levy from the University of Florida’s Veterinary School and co-founder of Operation Catnip was quoted in Best Friends magazine (2013) as stating, "There are much more important pressures on bird populations [than cats] - primarily pollution and habitat destruction. And those are harder areas for bird groups to be effective in.” Levy said: The problem is that part of the campaign is an attack on humane control of homeless or feral cats. Most of us love song-birds as much as we love cats, so we are not trying to choose one species over another. We're trying to come up with a solution that benefits everybody in the picture. Levy concludes that the goal is to reduce the feral cat population saying, “we can do it in a humane way that respects the animals rather than in a 50-year-old vision of animal control, in which the only way you can help animals is by killing them” (Best Friends, 2013). Eradication of all cats will not save humanity. Only facing our real problem, habitat loss, will save the world and the birds and other wildlife. And in the meanwhile, instead of ranting against cats, please help those of us on every continent to sterilize more cats: pet cats and feral cats. That would be the most sensible thing to do! There has been a lot of scary reporting about bird flu (also known as avian flu or H5N1) in the news lately. While this virus has proven to be severe and often deadly in cats, there are ways we can protect the cats in our lives from infection. How we can protect house cats:
How we can protect community cats:
No matter whether a cat lives indoors or out, if you notice her showing any of these clinical signs of bird flu infection, get her to a veterinarian right away. If you need help trapping a sick community cat, post an urgent request for help on Nextdoor and in a local Facebook TNR/community cat group. You can also look for TNR organizations in your area via saveacat.org/cat-action-teams-tnr-groups-by-state.html. It’s not yet known whether the virus can be spread between cats. Be cautious - watch cats who have been near a sick cat carefully for signs of developing infection. Signs of possible H5N1 infection in cats:
Maybe you’ve heard this story before. A lighthouse keeper named David Lyall brought his cat, Tibbles, when he moved to the remote Stephen’s Island (New Zealand). Within one year of Tibbles’ arrival, a flightless bird native and exclusive to the island went extinct.
Tibbles was known to have hunted the bird, now known as the Lyall’s wren, and the alignment of its disappearance with her presence on the island fostered the myth, referenced still by some people today, that a single cat quickly wiped out an entire species. Here are the facts:
Independence Day is a dangerous time for pets. The terrifying boom of fireworks send many cats and dogs into a panic as they try to flee the source of the noise. The result is a surge of lost pets, heartbroken pet parents, and animals impounded at shelters. July 5th is well known to be the busiest day for animal shelters.
With the current extreme overcrowding crisis being experienced in shelters throughout the country, it is particularly important that we keep our companion animals securely indoors. We need to do this not only for the benefit of each of them, but also for the hundreds of cats, dogs, rabbits, etc. already in our shelters who could be euthanized to make room for a flood of new arrivals. Even when a lost pet is reunited with their family from a shelter, their short stay there may have cost another animal’s life. And of course, running the streets in fear makes pets vulnerable to traffic, predators, and accidents. Keep your pets safe and out of the shelter this Fourth of July:
This letter was sent to the article's author, Emily Anthes. Her article can be found at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/science/australia-wildlife-cats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.k00.WwzV.dnX89H0ZCRhR&smid=em-share Dear Ms. Anthes,
I am the president and founder of Alley Cat Rescue, Inc., an international nonprofit that advocates for humane, compassionate treatment of cats. I was dismayed by the biased reporting in your article, “In Australia, ‘Cats Are Just Catastrophic.’” While I appreciate that you do mention Dr. Arian Wallach’s ‘pro-cat conservationist’ point of view, I wonder why you chose to relegate it to only a couple of short paragraphs and focus the article on Drs. Moseby and Read’s anti-cat theories. It would be best for the discussion of Australian wildlife conservation if widely-read and trusted publications such as The New York Times gave a more balanced exploration of the cat predation debate. In my hope that you will agree and follow up your article with another that delves into the possibility that cat predation is not among the most significant threats to Australian wildlife, and that, regardless, killing cats is a totally misguided method of preserving prey animal populations, I am sharing information collected across studies, books, and scientific articles. All references are provided to further your own investigation. I think you will find these sources fascinating and eye-opening. You write that cats “take an enormous toll on the world’s wildlife.” Yet that is a theory of some conservationists; it has not been proven, even in Australia. I won’t reinvent the wheel - I address the lack of science behind the this theory of page 100 of my book, Alley Cat Rescue's Guide to Managing Community Cats, where I write "The diet of cats has been studied on four continents, with at least 16 studies done in Europe, 12 in North America, 15 in Australia, and one study in Africa. 72 studies have been conducted on islands (Bonnaud et al., 2010), with most occurring on remote oceanic islands (Turner et al.).* And although these studies have helped identify the most common prey cats feed on and the many contributing factors as to why they feed on certain prey, few studies have examined the impact of cat predation on such prey populations…There simply is not sufficient information available to determine if cat predation has any detrimental effects on the overall populations of prey animals." You present cat predation in this article as a significant reason for the extinction of many species, and not as the opinion of Dr. Moseby or Dr. Reid, but as an accepted truth. When cats’ lives are at stake, it is irresponsible to highlight the alleged role of cat predation for the extinction of a species amongst numerous other possible and some proven causes. Gary J. Patronek, VMD, Ph.D. of Tufts University expressed the trouble with accepting the exaggeration of the little data we have eloquently in his letter to the editor of the Journal of Veterinary Medicine. The letter was written in 1996 but remarkably, and sadly, it is still relevant to the cat predation debate today: "Whittling down guesses or extrapolations from limited observations…does not make these estimates any more credible, and the fact that they are the best available data is not sufficient to justify their use when the consequences may be extermination for cats…What I find inconsistent in an otherwise scientific debate about biodiversity is how indictment of cats has been pursued almost in spite of the evidence." (DOI: 10.2460/javma.238.6.690). You explain also that killing the cats is one part of a multi-pronged approach to protecting the native animals living with and around Arid Recovery because both Drs. Read and Moseby acknowledge that it is not possible to eliminate all of the cats in the area. That leads me to wonder, if they accept that the cats are there to stay to some degree, why would they choose culling over sterilization to reduce the cats’ numbers? They are doubtlessly well aware of the arguments supporting sterilization as the most effective means of reducing cat populations over time. Perhaps they believe that the situation is too time-sensitive and that each cat eliminated will spare a significant number of wildlife. If that is the case, they should consider that sterilization decreases female cats’ hunting behavior because pregnant and nursing cats require more food than normal, and hunting behavior also decreases once cats reach six years of age (sterilized or not). If sterilization would decrease hunting by, let’s just say, one-third of the amount killing cats would in the short term and more than killing them would in the long term (as there would be fewer cats), it is unjustifiable to allow conservation concerns to outweigh moral arguments against culling. What’s more, killing cats in small groups could actually lead to an increase in their population over time. A 2014 study published in the journal Wildlife Research (DOI: 10.1071/WR14030) found that low-level culling of feral cats in Tasmania over a 13-month period resulted in an increase of 75% to 211% of known live cats during the culling period. When culling stopped, the numbers of cats gradually returned to pre-culling levels. Dr. Moseby says, “You have to make a choice between cats and wildlife.” I do not agree. It is my opinion, and Alley Cat Rescue’s official position, that all animal lives should be protected from human-caused threats. Sterilization and other non-lethal methods such as the fencing Arid Recovery already uses are the ways to accomplish this. The existence of domestic cats anywhere in the world beyond the region in Africa where they originated, is due to human expansion. Therefore, any threat they pose to biodiversity, if they do pose a threat, should not punish the cats - even if unintentionally. We need to clean up our own messes without harming innocent animals whenever possible and in the case of outdoor cats, it is possible. Sincerely, Louise Holton *Reference without link: Turner, Dennis C., et al. “The Domestic Cat: The Biology of Its Behaviour.” Hunting Behaviour of Domestic Cats and Their Impact on Prey Populations., edited by Patrick Bateson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000, pp. 152–175.  Earth Day is about protecting our living planet. The first step in doing that is identifying the greatest threats to the environment. Where wildlife and biodiversity are concerned, habitat loss due to human expansion is the clear frontrunner, as per World Wildlife Foundation’s Living Planet Report 2022 (along with many other credible sources). The report listed exploitation of organisms as the second biggest problem, followed by climate change, then pollution, and then invasive non-native species.
Yet based on messaging by bird-specific conservation groups such as the American Bird Conservancy, and novelist Jonathan Franzen’s widely-read opinion piece in The New Yorker, one would think that cat predation is set to destroy ecosystems around the world. Apart from the fact that cats’ status as non-native or invasive is highly debatable since they have been living in many parts of the world where they didn’t originate for centuries now, there are much bigger dangers facing biodiversity. Encroachment of cities and farmland on wildlife habitats, chemical and plastic pollutants being dumped into the atmosphere and waters, and the inhumane trade of exotic animals for human gain are all problems that need to be addressed. Cats who roam outdoors undeniably hunt and kill some animals, and they do not discriminate between plentiful and endangered species. However, the effect cats have on the overall population of prey animals is still unknown. The few studies that have been conducted on cat predation are from islands with closed ecosystems, where local animals have not evolved with predators. Because cat predation on continents is very different from island environments, it is inaccurate and inappropriate to extrapolate data from these particular studies to predict predation on continents. In fact, some studies have even shown that cats protect endangered bird populations by preying on rodents who themselves eat the eggs and chicks of ground nesting birds. Even so, many organizations continue to vilify cats; it is easier to fundraise at the expense of cats than to challenge the big, powerful industries and popular luxuries that do the real damage to our planet. This is tragic because it causes culling and other forms of persecution of cats, and doubly tragic because it diverts needed energy from solving the true problems. The path to saving lives should not be the destruction of lives. We need to focus on mitigating the harmful impacts of one species alone, and that is us! |
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