Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

[DanieMarie]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Because money.

Who is going to pay for this?

And it is REALLY expensive.

I went to university in a city called Victoria on Vancouver Island. The whole university area has a really big feral rabbit problem, and when I say "big," I mean BUNNIES EVERYWHERE. Like, look into any open field and it's just bunnies. They burrow into fields and they're even tunnelling under some roadways, which is making the roads unstable. The city and the university had been culling them, but animal rights groups stepped in and somehow got the green light to get them transported to a bunny sanctuary in Alberta (I believe at the cost of the city and university, which is also publicly funded). It was massively expensive, and guess what, there are still bunnies everywhere, because they breed like, well, rabbits. Either they keep shuttling the bunnies to the sanctuary at massive cost to the public, they have to make massive, expensive repairs to public roads and parks if they leave them be, or they go back to culling them.

[anunitu]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

One word:Rabbit stew....yummm

[DanieMarie]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Forgive me but that is a complete ignorant statement about economics. Money does not come from taxes.And? Those are not financed by taxes but with government money. Your point is moot.

As I understand it you people are from the United States, which has a sovereign currency. This means that the government creates money, it is not limited by it like EuroZone countries which are in practice private enterprises competing for Euros.

A country can't just print massive amounts of money though. Look at Germany in the 1920s. It can cause massive, massive inflation.

Also, not all of us are in the US. And your opinion is problematic from an EU standpoint because, as I have mentioned many times before, feral cats here are a big, big problem for native European wildcats, endangered bird species, and several other endangered or threatened animals who live here. Our woodlands are pretty fragile.

- - - Updated - - -

One word:Rabbit stew....yummm

Oh, there is many a tale of a hungry UVic student who trapped and cooked rabbits. Urban legend also has it that the mystery meat in the cafeteria is rabbit (though I doubt that one is true).

- - - Updated - - -

In some places where wildcats have a native range--Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, particularly in mainland ecosystems, this probably isn't as big of a deal...since the domestic cat is (recently) related to the wildcat, I'd guess that there is a less pronounced impact on wildlife because species has evolved along with the wildcat. But in the Americas, Australia, the islands of SE Asia, there are different species of native (wild) cats...heck, Australia doesn't have any, and the US's closest wild cat (in terms of behavior and size and prey) is the bobcat (which is a predation threat to the whooping crane popluation), but bobcat have a much larger range, are solitary (female ranges almost never overlap), and breed less.

Actually, it is, because the feral cats threaten the wildcat populations themselves. There are also a lot more feral cats than wildcats, and many birds are also under threat.

[Shahaku]

Re: Feral cats. Neuter or kill?

Let's just dump them all here and be done with it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashirojima

I'm pretty sure the local ecosystem on this island is already ruined thanks to the overpopulation of cats so we wouldn't have to worry about that. Eventually they'll end up eating each other you know? But we'd rather keep them all alive so here's a viable solution that won't continue to damage the world's ecosystems. Maybe if we're lucky we could find one or two other islands to dump them on. Easter island maybe?