Rebuttal to NY Times Article "In Australia, ‘Cats Are Just Catastrophic'"

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

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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.