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Cat predation studies



 
 
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  #31  
Old January 31st 04, 11:55 PM
Phil P
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"Alison" wrote in message
...
Hi ,
Does any one have or know where I can find or read copies of
Professor Robert May's cat predation study in the English village of
Felmersham , Bedford and the Churcher and Lawton study. There are lots
of references on Google to the C&L study but not the real thing.
I'm not trolling , I have to write an essay about cat predation for a
cat behaviour course-
Alison


Alison,

I've done a lot of research and accumulated a ton of studies and surveys and
related articles about cat predation over the years from my neverending
battles with fanatical environmentalists/naturalist and bird groups in my
area. These groups always seem to be trying to devise some project with a
humane-sounding title to "protect wildlife" (really only birds) that usually
turn out have a hidden plan for the mass extinction of stray and feral cat
colonies.

While you're conducting your research, please remember many of the "pro
bird" studies' data aren't direct data obtained during the actual study -
because there was no actual study. Many of the pro-bird studies are
actually other researchers' interpretations of another researcher's
interpretation of some original obscure study.

In addition, almost *all* of the astronomical numbers of killed/caught prey
reported in these pro-bird studies are *only* extrapolations from other very
small studies. Many of the extrapolations of the average number of prey
caught/cat/year from smaller studies to larger cat populations often include
large cities, where many cats are kept indoors and also
include cats that eirher too old or too young to hunt. So even though the
total number of cats for a given area may jive with local estimates, the
number of actual hunters may only be a fraction of the total population.
This would *drastically* reduce the accuracy of the estimated number of prey
caught/cat/year.

The Churcher and Lawton study is one of these bogus studies... the
methodology was seriously flawed. C&L asked owners of 78 cats in the
village to keep all the dead animals their cats brought home. They divided
the
total number of kills by the 78 cats and multiplied the average number of
kills per cat by the 5 million cats in England at the time.... including
London and other
big
cities where many cats are kept indoors. (They also included very old and
very young cats who probably didn't even hunt.) From these figures, C&L
concluded that 5 million cats were responsible for killing about 70 million
animals every year -- of which about 20 million are birds.... You can
imagine how many feathers that piece of fiction ruffled....

Another incrediblely manipulative and deceptive author to be wary of is
Stanley A. Temple -- In all his articles he cites references for his
data.... Almost all of references he cites and quotes to substantiate his
absurd claims are other articles *he* wrote! In those articles, he cites
and quotes even more articles that *he* wrote.... IOW, he's his own
reference! IOW, "If you don't believe and want proof, just ask *me*"!

In one of his delusions, Temple states rural free-ranging domestic cats in
Wisconsin may be killing between 8 and 217 million birds each year....Gee,
does Wisconsin even have 200 million birds...?

Here are some studies:

http://www.straypetadvocacy.org/html..._reviewed.html

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HTH,

Phil


  #32  
Old February 1st 04, 08:20 PM
Alison
external usenet poster
 
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Thanks Phil ,
Very useful stuff.! I was hoping you would join the thread. I
Googled the Churcher and Lawson study in the newsgroups and your name
came up a few times- The C&L seems to be mentioned in just about
every cat predation study since 1987 and it's alarming how much damage
it's done.-(
They used it in the Mammal Society Report as mentioned in the Stray
Pet Advocacy (mentioned as Woods, Macdonald, Harris).
The Mammal Society (Uk) report has grown like Topsy (or sexed up as
we call it in the UK).
It started off as a simple survey by the youth members of the society
and other members of the public and the results published
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/catspress.htm
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/catkills1.htm

However this was seized on by the press and non-cat lovers and at the
end of the nineties there was talk of restricting pet cats by law
which did *not* go down well with cat societies and cat lovers who
heavily criticised the report
http://www.messybeast.com/cp-cat-wildlife.htm

So now the report has morphed into this
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/cat_predation.htm

Hmm, Blinding people with science.
I've been reading this through and the first problem for me is
understanding the data and not understanding what "back-transforming
means" means and other terms so I'm having to read up about how
studies are conducted and how to understand data . -
Prey objects brought home (14,370) included a snail, 6 flys , 5 slugs
, a budgie and goldfish !!

This Australian Metroplitan Strudy is easier to understand
http://www.petnet.com.au/reark/reark.html

The RSPB and Songbird survivial don't believe that cats do great harm
to bird numbers .
http://www.rspb.org.uk/gardens/advic...y_of_index.asp
http://www.songbird-survival.org.uk/

In the last summers Bird Magazine (RSPB) in an article about the
decline of the house sparrow (Now on the Red danger list with
starlings )
From an article WHY HAVE ALL THE SPARROWS GONE? by RSPB Scientist
David Gibbons from Birds, Summer 2003, RSPB magazine.

*I also must mention the cats . The tabloids just love to blame the
demise of sparrow on the moggy. There is no convincing evidence
however that predation by cats is the cause of the house sparrow's
decline.
What is undisputable is that the house sparrow is the commonest
bird at Tiddles dining table , and that cats kill about a quarter of
the house sparrow population each year , many of them as fledgings.
This sounds a lot, and it is. How ever David Hole's work tell us that,
to maintain a stable population, only 15% of fledglings house sparrows
need to survive to replace those adults that die. The remaining 80%
will die anyway-these are *doomed surplus*. If they didn't, the
sparrow population would boom to numbers that couldn't possibly
survive.
A very large proportion of those killed by cats would probabley
die anyway and cat predation may well have no impact on sparrow
numbers at all. But we can't be sure . It's interesting that the most
second most common bird killed is the Blue Tit , which has increased
by 20% in 30 years.
Never the less, cat predation can't help and its distressing for cat
owners not to mention sparrows and neighbours of cat owners. we are
testing ways to reduce it . We asked 150 cat owners, mostly RSPB
members to fit cats with three different sorts of collars .
We tried collars with a bell, with an electric beeper and simple
collars with nothing on them . All the collars had a quick release
catch on them . Each collar was left on a month and everything the cat
caught was recorded.
The idea is that the noise of a bell or a bleeper will alert the
birds and other animals to moggys approach and thus foil its pounce.
Cats wearing a beeper caught half as many birds as those wearing a
simple collar. Even a simple bell reduced the predation rate. The
result for mammels were very similar.
So clearly we could do something quite simple to reduce the levels
of cat predation , but we don't think it is a massive problem for
sparrows."

Alison




"Phil P" wrote in message
...

I've done a lot of research and accumulated a ton of studies and

surveys and
related articles about cat predation over the years from my

neverending
battles with fanatical environmentalists/naturalist and bird groups

in my
area. These groups always seem to be trying to devise some project

with a
humane-sounding title to "protect wildlife" (really only birds) that

usually
turn out have a hidden plan for the mass extinction of stray and

feral cat
colonies.

While you're conducting your research, please remember many of the

"pro
bird" studies' data aren't direct data obtained during the actual

study -
because there was no actual study. Many of the pro-bird studies are
actually other researchers' interpretations of another researcher's
interpretation of some original obscure study.

In addition, almost *all* of the astronomical numbers of

killed/caught prey
reported in these pro-bird studies are *only* extrapolations from

other very
small studies. Many of the extrapolations of the average number of

prey
caught/cat/year from smaller studies to larger cat populations often

include
large cities, where many cats are kept indoors and also
include cats that eirher too old or too young to hunt. So even

though the
total number of cats for a given area may jive with local estimates,

the
number of actual hunters may only be a fraction of the total

population.
This would *drastically* reduce the accuracy of the estimated number

of prey
caught/cat/year.

The Churcher and Lawton study is one of these bogus studies... the
methodology was seriously flawed. C&L asked owners of 78 cats in

the
village to keep all the dead animals their cats brought home. They

divided
the
total number of kills by the 78 cats and multiplied the average

number of
kills per cat by the 5 million cats in England at the time....

including
London and other
big
cities where many cats are kept indoors. (They also included very

old and
very young cats who probably didn't even hunt.) From these figures,

C&L
concluded that 5 million cats were responsible for killing about 70

million
animals every year -- of which about 20 million are birds.... You

can
imagine how many feathers that piece of fiction ruffled....

Another incrediblely manipulative and deceptive author to be wary of

is
Stanley A. Temple -- In all his articles he cites references for his
data.... Almost all of references he cites and quotes to

substantiate his
absurd claims are other articles *he* wrote! In those articles, he

cites
and quotes even more articles that *he* wrote.... IOW, he's his own
reference! IOW, "If you don't believe and want proof, just ask

*me*"!

In one of his delusions, Temple states rural free-ranging domestic

cats in
Wisconsin may be killing between 8 and 217 million birds each

year....Gee,
does Wisconsin even have 200 million birds...?

Here are some studies:

http://www.straypetadvocacy.org/html..._reviewed.html

http://www.angelswish.org/feralprogram.html
[..]
HTH,


Phil



  #33  
Old February 1st 04, 08:20 PM
Alison
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Thanks Phil ,
Very useful stuff.! I was hoping you would join the thread. I
Googled the Churcher and Lawson study in the newsgroups and your name
came up a few times- The C&L seems to be mentioned in just about
every cat predation study since 1987 and it's alarming how much damage
it's done.-(
They used it in the Mammal Society Report as mentioned in the Stray
Pet Advocacy (mentioned as Woods, Macdonald, Harris).
The Mammal Society (Uk) report has grown like Topsy (or sexed up as
we call it in the UK).
It started off as a simple survey by the youth members of the society
and other members of the public and the results published
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/catspress.htm
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/catkills1.htm

However this was seized on by the press and non-cat lovers and at the
end of the nineties there was talk of restricting pet cats by law
which did *not* go down well with cat societies and cat lovers who
heavily criticised the report
http://www.messybeast.com/cp-cat-wildlife.htm

So now the report has morphed into this
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mammal/cat_predation.htm

Hmm, Blinding people with science.
I've been reading this through and the first problem for me is
understanding the data and not understanding what "back-transforming
means" means and other terms so I'm having to read up about how
studies are conducted and how to understand data . -
Prey objects brought home (14,370) included a snail, 6 flys , 5 slugs
, a budgie and goldfish !!

This Australian Metroplitan Strudy is easier to understand
http://www.petnet.com.au/reark/reark.html

The RSPB and Songbird survivial don't believe that cats do great harm
to bird numbers .
http://www.rspb.org.uk/gardens/advic...y_of_index.asp
http://www.songbird-survival.org.uk/

In the last summers Bird Magazine (RSPB) in an article about the
decline of the house sparrow (Now on the Red danger list with
starlings )
From an article WHY HAVE ALL THE SPARROWS GONE? by RSPB Scientist
David Gibbons from Birds, Summer 2003, RSPB magazine.

*I also must mention the cats . The tabloids just love to blame the
demise of sparrow on the moggy. There is no convincing evidence
however that predation by cats is the cause of the house sparrow's
decline.
What is undisputable is that the house sparrow is the commonest
bird at Tiddles dining table , and that cats kill about a quarter of
the house sparrow population each year , many of them as fledgings.
This sounds a lot, and it is. How ever David Hole's work tell us that,
to maintain a stable population, only 15% of fledglings house sparrows
need to survive to replace those adults that die. The remaining 80%
will die anyway-these are *doomed surplus*. If they didn't, the
sparrow population would boom to numbers that couldn't possibly
survive.
A very large proportion of those killed by cats would probabley
die anyway and cat predation may well have no impact on sparrow
numbers at all. But we can't be sure . It's interesting that the most
second most common bird killed is the Blue Tit , which has increased
by 20% in 30 years.
Never the less, cat predation can't help and its distressing for cat
owners not to mention sparrows and neighbours of cat owners. we are
testing ways to reduce it . We asked 150 cat owners, mostly RSPB
members to fit cats with three different sorts of collars .
We tried collars with a bell, with an electric beeper and simple
collars with nothing on them . All the collars had a quick release
catch on them . Each collar was left on a month and everything the cat
caught was recorded.
The idea is that the noise of a bell or a bleeper will alert the
birds and other animals to moggys approach and thus foil its pounce.
Cats wearing a beeper caught half as many birds as those wearing a
simple collar. Even a simple bell reduced the predation rate. The
result for mammels were very similar.
So clearly we could do something quite simple to reduce the levels
of cat predation , but we don't think it is a massive problem for
sparrows."

Alison




"Phil P" wrote in message
...

I've done a lot of research and accumulated a ton of studies and

surveys and
related articles about cat predation over the years from my

neverending
battles with fanatical environmentalists/naturalist and bird groups

in my
area. These groups always seem to be trying to devise some project

with a
humane-sounding title to "protect wildlife" (really only birds) that

usually
turn out have a hidden plan for the mass extinction of stray and

feral cat
colonies.

While you're conducting your research, please remember many of the

"pro
bird" studies' data aren't direct data obtained during the actual

study -
because there was no actual study. Many of the pro-bird studies are
actually other researchers' interpretations of another researcher's
interpretation of some original obscure study.

In addition, almost *all* of the astronomical numbers of

killed/caught prey
reported in these pro-bird studies are *only* extrapolations from

other very
small studies. Many of the extrapolations of the average number of

prey
caught/cat/year from smaller studies to larger cat populations often

include
large cities, where many cats are kept indoors and also
include cats that eirher too old or too young to hunt. So even

though the
total number of cats for a given area may jive with local estimates,

the
number of actual hunters may only be a fraction of the total

population.
This would *drastically* reduce the accuracy of the estimated number

of prey
caught/cat/year.

The Churcher and Lawton study is one of these bogus studies... the
methodology was seriously flawed. C&L asked owners of 78 cats in

the
village to keep all the dead animals their cats brought home. They

divided
the
total number of kills by the 78 cats and multiplied the average

number of
kills per cat by the 5 million cats in England at the time....

including
London and other
big
cities where many cats are kept indoors. (They also included very

old and
very young cats who probably didn't even hunt.) From these figures,

C&L
concluded that 5 million cats were responsible for killing about 70

million
animals every year -- of which about 20 million are birds.... You

can
imagine how many feathers that piece of fiction ruffled....

Another incrediblely manipulative and deceptive author to be wary of

is
Stanley A. Temple -- In all his articles he cites references for his
data.... Almost all of references he cites and quotes to

substantiate his
absurd claims are other articles *he* wrote! In those articles, he

cites
and quotes even more articles that *he* wrote.... IOW, he's his own
reference! IOW, "If you don't believe and want proof, just ask

*me*"!

In one of his delusions, Temple states rural free-ranging domestic

cats in
Wisconsin may be killing between 8 and 217 million birds each

year....Gee,
does Wisconsin even have 200 million birds...?

Here are some studies:

http://www.straypetadvocacy.org/html..._reviewed.html

http://www.angelswish.org/feralprogram.html
[..]
HTH,


Phil



  #34  
Old February 1st 04, 08:52 PM
frlpwr
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Phil P wrote:

(snip)

The Churcher and Lawton study is one of these bogus studies... the
methodology was seriously flawed. C&L asked owners of 78 cats in the
village to keep all the dead animals their cats brought home.


C&L's "research", actually a private boardingschool student project, did
not discriminate between remains of animals victimized by free-ranging
cats and remains of animals scavenged by free-ranging cats.

As you said, they applied the superlative hunting skills of farmcats to
every old, blind and inept housecat in G. Britain.
..
Another incrediblely manipulative and deceptive author to be wary of
is Stanley A. Temple -- In all his articles he cites references for
his data.... Almost all of references he cites and quotes to
substantiate his absurd claims are other articles *he* wrote! In those articles, he cites
and quotes even more articles that *he* wrote.... IOW, he's his own
reference! IOW, "If you don't believe and want proof, just ask *me*"!


Heh. There's good reason Temple's work has never appeared in any
peer-reviewed journal. To his credit, he did come clean in a 1994
interview in the Sonoma (California) County Independent. He said,
"Those figures were from our proposal. They aren't actual data; that
was just our projections to show how bad it might be."

Further, the data collection for Temple's work was left to Coleman, a
graduate student and TA under Temple and his co-author on early papers
on cat predation. The cat population estimate for the three Wisconsin
counties forming the foundation for Temple's extrapolation was founded
on a student phone survey. By some undescribed methodology, the
students assigned 31 cats to every farm household with _any_ cats and 9
cats to every non-farm household with _any_ cats.

If Wisconsin farmcats are killing millions of birds, (and that's a big
"if"), there's no one to blame but farm households.

(snip)


  #35  
Old February 1st 04, 08:52 PM
frlpwr
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Phil P wrote:

(snip)

The Churcher and Lawton study is one of these bogus studies... the
methodology was seriously flawed. C&L asked owners of 78 cats in the
village to keep all the dead animals their cats brought home.


C&L's "research", actually a private boardingschool student project, did
not discriminate between remains of animals victimized by free-ranging
cats and remains of animals scavenged by free-ranging cats.

As you said, they applied the superlative hunting skills of farmcats to
every old, blind and inept housecat in G. Britain.
..
Another incrediblely manipulative and deceptive author to be wary of
is Stanley A. Temple -- In all his articles he cites references for
his data.... Almost all of references he cites and quotes to
substantiate his absurd claims are other articles *he* wrote! In those articles, he cites
and quotes even more articles that *he* wrote.... IOW, he's his own
reference! IOW, "If you don't believe and want proof, just ask *me*"!


Heh. There's good reason Temple's work has never appeared in any
peer-reviewed journal. To his credit, he did come clean in a 1994
interview in the Sonoma (California) County Independent. He said,
"Those figures were from our proposal. They aren't actual data; that
was just our projections to show how bad it might be."

Further, the data collection for Temple's work was left to Coleman, a
graduate student and TA under Temple and his co-author on early papers
on cat predation. The cat population estimate for the three Wisconsin
counties forming the foundation for Temple's extrapolation was founded
on a student phone survey. By some undescribed methodology, the
students assigned 31 cats to every farm household with _any_ cats and 9
cats to every non-farm household with _any_ cats.

If Wisconsin farmcats are killing millions of birds, (and that's a big
"if"), there's no one to blame but farm households.

(snip)


  #36  
Old February 2nd 04, 09:39 PM
Sharon Talbert
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


Thanks for the response, Alison. I will be watching for your study; keep
us posted! Pity we can't communicate from my Campus Cats address, but I
can't reach you directly and my psycho spam cop won't let you into Campus
Cats.

Sharon Talbert

  #37  
Old February 2nd 04, 09:39 PM
Sharon Talbert
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


Thanks for the response, Alison. I will be watching for your study; keep
us posted! Pity we can't communicate from my Campus Cats address, but I
can't reach you directly and my psycho spam cop won't let you into Campus
Cats.

Sharon Talbert

  #38  
Old February 2nd 04, 10:18 PM
Phil P
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Alison" wrote in message
...
Thanks Phil ,
Very useful stuff.! I was hoping you would join the thread. I
Googled the Churcher and Lawson study in the newsgroups and your name
came up a few times- The C&L seems to be mentioned in just about
every cat predation study since 1987 and it's alarming how much damage
it's done.-(


By the time the truth finally gets out--- its too late.


Here're a couple more from my files - I don't have the urls so I posted the
entire articles because I think they're good -- Not many orgs in my book
have more credibility than Alley Cat Allies'.



This information is courtesy of Alley Cat Allies (ACA). Many thanks to
them!





The topic of wildlife predation by cats is usually a very emotional
issue between cat lovers and bird lovers. The books listed in the
bibliography will help you become more informed about the issue.



As illustrated by this material, many studies have been done worldwide
on continents and islands since the early 1940's. However, much of this
information is either ignored or unavailable to researchers in the U.S. More
often quoted are two studies in which the numbers have been extrapolated
across a state or a county. The results of such extrapolation are deceptive
and add up to the impression of tremendous numbers of birds and small
mammals killed by cats each year.



For specific percentages, see the section "Cats as Rodent Specialists"
below.

Bird lovers should read the section "Why American Songbirds Have
Vanished".

Cats are carnivores, equipped with highly developed senses, sharp
teeth and claws. Wild cats are the supreme predators among terrestrial
mammals and although they have a reputation for wanton slaughter, only
well-fed domestic cats can possible be accused of this, as they often do not
eat their prey. They hunt, in essence, because they are compelled to do so
by nature. Even in such cases, scientific evidence shows cats mostly catch
small mammals such as rodents, and insects.



Feral cats who rely solely on hunting for food, as with all other wild
cats, spend much of their time seeking food and stalking it. They often have
to wait for hours for potential prey to come by and often are unsuccessful
at making a kill.

Many zoologists have observed that feral cats are mostly scavengers,
hanging out next to dumpsters to wait for a hand out. Peter Neville, a pet
behaviorist and author of many books on cats, worked in England for two
decades with feral colonies. Neville states, "a deliberate strategy of
scavenging has enabled many feral cats almost to give up hunting altogether.
They may learn instead to lie around waste bins of hotels for fresh supplies
or to cadge from well-meaning human providers in urban areas."



This "begging" and opportunistic behavior started with the
domestication of the cat approximately 4,000 years ago. Cats congregated
around grain storage barrels, attracted by the rodents who fed off the
spilled grain. Cats are opportunistic feeders and hunters, living off the
easiest source of available food and will scavenge from human refuse and
carrion.



Island Cats

The much publicized studies of the effects of feral cats on island
bird populations have added to the misinformation about their effects on
continental wildlife and therefore made them very unpopular animals. Cats
were transported to islands around the world to control rodents, and they
also prey on ground nesting birds. There are usually no mammalian predators
on islands for birds to adjust to, so they have little defense mechanism
against the imported cats, mongooses or rats. Even on islands, cats often
eat dead birds and other carrion as well as the introduced rodents.

Feral cats in both urban and island environments often are hungry,
which contradicts their image as wanton killers. In her book Maverick Cats,
Ellen Perry Berkley reports that on San Nichols Island, 22.5 percent of
ferals showed mottled livers, a sign of inadequate diet. Ferals sometimes
fall prey to avian predators in island environments. The Galapagos Hawk, for
example, preys on feral kittens.



Cats as Rodent Specialists



Ethologist Paul Leyhausen considers the domestic cat generally as a
rodent specialist, because its preferred sit-and-wait strategy is much
better suited to catching mice and young rabbits. Cats will wait for hours
outside burrows for these animals to come out. Even though birds can fly in
any direction and are more difficult to catch, some cats seem to become bird
specialists and learn to raid nests and burrows for ground nesting birds.



A wildlife biologist recently said that researchers were "obsessively
preoccupied with predation by cats and often overlooked other causes of
wildlife depletion." An investigative journalist found many U.S. researchers
using the Stanley Temple study in Wisconsin and the Churcher study in
Britain, were unaware of the international studies conducted during the past
forty years, all clearly reflecting the predominance of feline predation on
mammals over birds.

The Temple study was done in a rural area and the figures were
extrapolated across the state. The Churcher study of 70 cats in a rural area
brought about an outcry that cats were killing 100 million birds and small
mammals in Britain each year.



Roger Tabor, British naturalist and biologist, says of the study: "It
is not realistic to multiply the numbers of catches of these (70) rural cats
by the entire cat population of Britain. Most cats are town cats with small
ranges, and catch fewer items of prey than the village cats of this survey.
The mesmeric effect of big numbers seems to have stultified reason."



Tabor goes on to say the survey found the house cat is a "significant
predator" and not that it was devastating Britain's bird population.
Although a quarter of the town's house sparrows were consumed by cats each
year, after each breeding season the sparrow population doubled. In winter
many people feed garden birds, while nest boxes and domestic buildings
provide additional nesting sites and in this way bird populations are kept
well above "natural" levels.



The stomach contents of cats confirm that they are specialized
predators of small mammals. Berkley details six studies from 1936 to 1957 in
various states in the U.S. In these studies the stomach content of feral
cats was analyzed. The results confirmed mammals make up the largest
percentage of food in those cats relying solely on hunting. Results from two
studies follow:

1940, Oregon: Mammals 61.8%, Birds 18.9%, Carrion 10.7%, Garbage 8.3%.

1941, Oklahoma: Mammals 55%, Garbage 26.5%, Insects 12.5%, Birds 4%,
Reptiles 2%.



A New Zealand study showed mammals account for 93% of consumed food
and birds 4.5%. In Australia, biologists Brian Coman and Hans Brunner
concluded after studying feral cats that mammals made up 88% of the diet and
birds 5.2%. They reported:

"The common belief that feral cats are serious predators of birds is
apparently without basis. Although birds were common in all sampling areas,
they were a relatively minor item in the diet. Presumably, other factors
such as difficulty of capture are responsible for the low intake of birds."



A study in Pennsylvania in 1954 found the food of urban feral cats
consisted of 85% garbage and 15% rodents and birds.

The following is a good summary of the conclusions reached by many
biologists after studying cats, predation and wildlife on four continents:
Europe (13 studies), North America (12 studies), Australia (9 studies), and
Africa (1 study). The diet of cats has also been studied on 22 islands from
the equator to latitude 57 (see the Bibliography).

C. J. Mead, 1982:

"[T]he birds in suburban and rural parts of Britain have coexisted
with cats for hundreds of generations, and they may now be under less
pressure from cats than they were in the past from the assorted natural
predators. Any bird populations on the continents that could not withstand
these levels of predation from cats and other predators would have
disappeared long ago. But populations of birds on oceanic islands have
evolved in circumstances in which predation from mammalian predators was
negligible and they, and any other island vertebrates, are therefore
particularly vulnerable to predation when cats have been inroduced."

B. M. Fitzgerald summarizes his findings of the feral cat diets by
stating:

"On all continents birds are usually much less important than mammals;
birds were present on average at 21% frequency of occurance, and mammals at
68%."

These biologists agree with Tabor,

"In terms of the cats as threats to wildlife, generally for countries
like Britain and America where other species have coexisted with the cat
family predators for a long time, cats are no more harmful than other
predators. Only in cases of small islands and the unique circumstances of
Australia has the effect of cats, both feral and domestic, been very
harmful. In biological systems it is insufficient merely to have found one
animal will eat another, that, after all, is what predators do - but is that
predation pressure within normal limits? Is the prime predator the cat?"

Tabor concludes by suggesting, "disturbances by man" should be
considered.



Double Standards

At this time in history when the human population causes so much
destruction to the earth, we need to remind ourselves of our species'
responsibility and consider our 'double standards'. We often excuse or
ignore the devastation done to the environment by humans and the results of
this destruction on our wildlife. Urban sprawl, shopping malls, road
building, golf courses, etc. all play a part in reducing habitat and food
sources and all have negative effects on wildlife. We poison our air with
exhaust fumes from over 120 million automobiles and spray 4 billion pounds
of pesticides into the atmosphere annually. The WorldWatch Institute cites
deforestation due to razing of forests for croplands, pastures and real
estate as one of the major factors contributing to the loss of all birds,
including songbirds.



There are 14,136 golf courses nationwide, each of which uses 150 acres
of land. Each acre is treated with 18 pounds of pesticides annually.
Pesticide use causes enormous losses in bird populations. In the U.S., 220
million acres have been deforested for livestock production, yet
environmentalists are eager to eradicate all alien and introduced species
except cattle. Rather than blaming cats for so many of our problems, perhaps
we should look toward modifying our lifestyles and animal-based agriculture,
so destructive to natural ecosystems, and move toward methods which are less
damaging to our environment.



Why American Songbirds Have Vanished

Although songbird populations are declining, other birds such as
blackbirds and greenfinches, blue jays and brown-headed cowbirds (both
nestling-eating predators) are exploding. Year-round U.S. bird residents are
stable or increasing in numbers, indicating the need for serious
consideration and urgent attention to reasons why songbirds are in decline.
Blaming cats for songbird decline is a facile and simplistic solution to a
complex problem.



Professor John Terborgh of Duke University reports in the May 1992
issue of Scientific American that little can be done about restoring
songbirds in rural and suburban areas and conservation efforts should be
directed towards consolidating and expanding large tracts of forest, such as
the Smokies and Adirondacks, to maximize habitat for nesting birds. Another
suggestion is for farmers to practice fallowing their fields every two to
three years. He also mentions the damage done by clear-cutting national
forests and overgrazing federal lands.



More than 250 species of song birds migrate south of U.S. borders.
Tropical deforestation is occurring at the rate of 142,000 to 200,000 square
kilometers each year, an area roughly the size of Florida. At this rate the
world's remaining tropical forests will be depleted by 2030 and many species
of songbirds will disappear along with them.

The main problem is mankind, not cats.





Bibliography

1. Berkeley, Ellen Perry, Maverick Cats, New England Press, 1992

2. Bradshaw, John, The Behavior of the Domestic Cat, Cambridge
University Press, 1988

3. Brett, Caroline, Wild Cats, Dorset Press, 1992

4. Seidensticker, Dr. John & Lumpkin, Dr. Susan (eds.), Great Cats,
Rodale Press, 1991

5. Sproule, Anna & Michael, The Complete Book of the Cat, Gallery
Books, 1989

6. Tabor, Roger, Cats. The Rise of the Cat, BBC Books, 1991

7. Tabor, Roger, The Wild Life of the Domestic Cat, Arrow Books, 1983

8. Turner, Dennis & Bateson, Patrick (eds.), The Domestic Cat,
Cambridge University Press, 1988









Understanding Cats and Predation

(from Alley Cat Action, Fall 1997)

Many studies have shown that cats do not have a detrimental impact on
wildlife on

continents. However, many people still feel that cats are to blame for the
depletion of

songbirds and other animals. Two studies most often quoted to support
placing blame on

feral cats are the Stanley Temple study and the Churcher/Lawton study. Some
individuals

and groups use these studies in misguided efforts to discredit Alley Cat
Allies' and others

work to humanely control feral cats. However, over sixty studies on feral
cats have been

written from different continents throughout the world - all showing three
very important

points: 1) Cats are opportunistic feeders, eating what is most easily
available. Feral cats are

scavengers, and many rely on garbage and handouts from people; 2) Cats are
rodent

specialists. Birds make up a small percentage of their diet when they rely
solely on hunting

for food 3) and, cats may prey on a population without destroying it. If
this were not so, we

would no longer have any mice around.

Even though some cats can become efficient hunters and do kill birds, many
international

biologists agree that only on small islands do cats pose a severe threat to
the wildlife

populations. They agree with biologist C.J. Mead that "any bird populations
on the

continents that could not withstand these levels of predation from cats and
other predators

would have disappeared long ago."

And finally, while many concentrate their efforts on blaming cats, the real
culprit, homo

sapiens, goes free; continuing the destruction of habitat, hunting, killing,
and using

pesticides that endanger entire populations of wildlife, including millions
of birds. The

following is a collection of opinions from experts who have studied feral
cat predation and

who do not blame cats for detrimentally impacting wildlife.

Opinion from the experts

The following is an excerpt from Roger Tabor's Understanding Cats, (The
Reader's

Digest Association, Inc.: New York/Montreal, 1995).

"From the mid-nineteenth century mankind's own numbers and destruction of
huge areas of

virgin planet surface have exploded exponentially. As man thrived, so did
the domestic cat

due to the massive increase in food supply for both house and feral animals
(pp. 8-9)."

"Cats hunt, catch prey, and eat it - they are carnivores. To expect them not
to hunt is

unreasonable both because of their biology and the natural order of things.
Almost

incredibly, in the USA there is a growing idea that carnivores are somehow
immoral.

Although that view may be extreme, that cats catch birds causes cat-owning
bird lovers

much concern.

"While the size of the range of rural feral cats reflects their prey
requirements, prey is not

necessary for the survival of domestic house cats, their range sizes are
independent of its

abundance. While this could make them more of a danger to wildlife, this
does not occur for

a number of reasons.. Not all house cats are competent hunters and most only
catch prey

occasionally.. Although cats are superb hunters, it is their scavenging
ability that allows

them to survive as feral-living animals and live with us eating food off a
saucer.

"Contrary to common belief, cats do not catch many birds, but mainly small
mammals.

Proportionately, town cats will catch more birds than their country cousins.
What is often

overlooked is that although cats are far more common in towns than in the
country, so are

birds! As well as feeding cats, we also feed birds. We provide artificial
nest sites in the form

of nestboxes and buildings. Our gardens provide good habitat in the form of
rich scrubland,

with excellent insect support due to an increased flowering time in the
year, and lawns with

abundant earthworms. Our actions can be seen as providing optimum conditions
to

maximize bird numbers! Consequently, when Chris Mead of the British Trust
for Ornithology

assessed the numbers of ringed garden birds caught by cats, he found that
they were not

having a harmful effect on bird populations (pp. 101-102)."

Are concerns of cat predation and effects on birds/wildlife valid?

Jeff Elliott wrote an extensive article for The Sonoma County Independent,
"The Accused,"

(March 3-16, 1994), which investigated frequently used studies that
implicate cats in the

decrease of wildlife populations. Following is an excerpt from the article
listing the studies

and his findings of their accuracy.

"But what do those studies actually say? And how good is the science in
them? Here's some

background on the two most frequently mentioned studies, cited in Cats and
Wildlife: A

Factsheet from the National Audubon Society. 'Britain's 5 million cats kill
about 20 million

birds per year.'

"Studying the hunting trophies brought home by 78 cats in a single English
village, Peter

Churcher and John Lawton found birds were 35 percent of the kill - by far
the highest

estimate in any such study. In a 1989 condensation for Natural History
magazine, they

multiplied their results by the estimated number of cats in the entire
nation. Rarely are

projections made with such limited data, except in junior high science
projects - which may

be an appropriate comparison, considering Churcher teaches at a boys'
school.

"Researchers in Wisconsin cite cats for killing 19 million songbirds.

"Doctor Stanley Temple, co-author of this frequently quoted work, seemed
exasperated

when asked again to rehash his findings. 'The media has had a field day with
this since we

started,' he sighed. Those figures were from our proposal. They aren't
actual data; that was

just our projection to show how bad it might be.' No one interviewed has
seen Temple's

unpublished research.

"But the [Sonoma County] supervisors appeared to give special attention to a
letter written

by Drs. Peter Connors and Victor Chow, UC/Davis researchers working at the
Bodega Marine

Laboratory. By projecting the numbers cited from Wisconsin and Great
Britain, they

estimated 500,000 Sonoma County birds are killed by cats annually. In a
telephone

interview, Connors said he has read only the condensation of the British
study and has seen

only "extracted forms" of Temple's work, which of course were guesstimates
for the

proposal. He was surprised to learn this study was unpublished. 'Look, we're
not cat

researchers,' said Connors. 'I've never worked with cats at all; I'm an
ornithologist.' Then

what expertise does he have about cats? 'Vic (Chow) has been participating
in a mentor

program with Piner High School students on a project tracking feral cats,'
he explained. 'We

had (radio transmitter) collars on three animals. We didn't do a full study;
it's just a

program with high school students.'"

The following is an excerpt from Peter Neville's Claws and Purrs:
Understanding

the Two Sides of Your Cat (Sidgwick and Jackson: London, 1992), p. 164. Mr.

Neville is the Director of the Center of Applied Pet Ethology in the United
Kingdom.

"In England, at least, there is no evidence to suggest that the occasional
high mortality of

birds due to pet cats has had any damaging effect on even one species of
bird, however

distressing to birds, bird lovers and cat owners that predation may be.

"In any case, as we have seen, the strategy used by cats for catching birds
is not hugely

successful at the best of times and only increases in efficiency when the
birds stalked are

more vulnerable or less able to escape."

B.M. Fitzgerald, Ecology Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial

Research, New Zealand Mead has studied various aspects of feral cats (home

range, effect on birdlife, food) and the effects of various predators on
local

wildlife, since 1970, in New Zealand.

"As Mead (1982) emphasized, the birds in suburban and rural parts of Britain
have coexisted

with cats for hundreds of generations. And they may now be under less
pressure

from cats than they were in the past from a variety of assorted natural
predators. Any bird

populations on the continents that could not withstand these levels of
predation from cats

and other predators would have disappeared long ago."

The following is an excerpt from Gary J. Patronek's, VMD, Ph.D. Tufts
University,

"Letter to Editor," Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association,
Vol.

209, No. 10, November 15, 1996.

"If the real objection to managed colonies is that it is unethical to put
cats in a situation

where they could potentially kill any wild creature, then the ethical issue
should be debated

on its own merits without burdening the discussion with highly speculative
numerical

estimates for either wildlife mortality or cat predation. Whittling down
guesses or

extrapolations from limited observations by a factor of 10 or even 100 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.

"If asking for reasonable data to support the general assertion that
wildlife mortality across

the United States attributable to cat predation is unacceptably high can be
construed as

'attempting to minimize the impact,' then I am guilty as charged. 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."

The following is an excerpt from a speech by John Terborgh (Director of the
Center

for Tropical Conservation, Duke University) at The Manomet Symposium in
1989,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

"The global environmental crisis has caught up with migratory birds. There
are simply too

many people making ever increasing demands on a fixed supply of resources.
It is

inconceivable that we can continue on the same reckless path for very long.

"The conversion of forests to cropland, pasture and urban sprawl, the
downgrading of virgin

stands to second growth, and the conversion of mixed forests to pine
monocultures. The

inescapable implication of this for conservation is that there is only a
limited amount of time

left in which to slow human population growth and to institute other
fundamental changes in

the countries of this hemisphere or many of our migratory birds will be
little more than

memories.

"One country after another will pass the 100 per square kilometer population
threshold in

the coming two or three decades. After this has happened, there is really
not much that can

be done to salvage winter habitat for migratory birds."

What then is responsible for the decreasing number of birds?

The following is an excerpt from a speech by biologist Dr. Robert Berg.

"Habitat destruction: As man's development of the planet continues,
available habitat for

animals and plants is being carved up into smaller pieces. The fragmentation
of ecosystems

separates populations genetically from each other, and if a particular
habitat is not large

enough, remnant populations contained within them are doomed due to genetic
inbreeding.

If there are not enough large areas, chance occurrences such as an extremely
harsh winter,

floods, localized disease, etc., can drive remaining populations to the
brink of extinction.

"Some species are dependent on environmental policy in more than one place.
One

endangered species of bird, Bachman's warbler, is disappearing not because
there is a

scarcity of riverine swampland in the (Southeast) United States in which it
breeds, but

because it used to winter in the forests of western Cuba virtually all of
which have been

cleared for sugar cane.

"In some cases other birds have been responsible for the demise of some bird
species.

Kirtland's warbler, already compressed into a small remaining jack-pine
country in Michigan,

was subjected to nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird laying its eggs
in their

nests. The baby cowbirds push the Kirtland's own young from the nest and are
then raised

by these hapless birds. The European starling has spread across the United
States since its

introduction in the early 1900's, depriving many of our resident and less
aggressive birds of

habitat. In the words of Pogo, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.'"


















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  #39  
Old February 2nd 04, 10:18 PM
Phil P
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Alison" wrote in message
...
Thanks Phil ,
Very useful stuff.! I was hoping you would join the thread. I
Googled the Churcher and Lawson study in the newsgroups and your name
came up a few times- The C&L seems to be mentioned in just about
every cat predation study since 1987 and it's alarming how much damage
it's done.-(


By the time the truth finally gets out--- its too late.


Here're a couple more from my files - I don't have the urls so I posted the
entire articles because I think they're good -- Not many orgs in my book
have more credibility than Alley Cat Allies'.



This information is courtesy of Alley Cat Allies (ACA). Many thanks to
them!





The topic of wildlife predation by cats is usually a very emotional
issue between cat lovers and bird lovers. The books listed in the
bibliography will help you become more informed about the issue.



As illustrated by this material, many studies have been done worldwide
on continents and islands since the early 1940's. However, much of this
information is either ignored or unavailable to researchers in the U.S. More
often quoted are two studies in which the numbers have been extrapolated
across a state or a county. The results of such extrapolation are deceptive
and add up to the impression of tremendous numbers of birds and small
mammals killed by cats each year.



For specific percentages, see the section "Cats as Rodent Specialists"
below.

Bird lovers should read the section "Why American Songbirds Have
Vanished".

Cats are carnivores, equipped with highly developed senses, sharp
teeth and claws. Wild cats are the supreme predators among terrestrial
mammals and although they have a reputation for wanton slaughter, only
well-fed domestic cats can possible be accused of this, as they often do not
eat their prey. They hunt, in essence, because they are compelled to do so
by nature. Even in such cases, scientific evidence shows cats mostly catch
small mammals such as rodents, and insects.



Feral cats who rely solely on hunting for food, as with all other wild
cats, spend much of their time seeking food and stalking it. They often have
to wait for hours for potential prey to come by and often are unsuccessful
at making a kill.

Many zoologists have observed that feral cats are mostly scavengers,
hanging out next to dumpsters to wait for a hand out. Peter Neville, a pet
behaviorist and author of many books on cats, worked in England for two
decades with feral colonies. Neville states, "a deliberate strategy of
scavenging has enabled many feral cats almost to give up hunting altogether.
They may learn instead to lie around waste bins of hotels for fresh supplies
or to cadge from well-meaning human providers in urban areas."



This "begging" and opportunistic behavior started with the
domestication of the cat approximately 4,000 years ago. Cats congregated
around grain storage barrels, attracted by the rodents who fed off the
spilled grain. Cats are opportunistic feeders and hunters, living off the
easiest source of available food and will scavenge from human refuse and
carrion.



Island Cats

The much publicized studies of the effects of feral cats on island
bird populations have added to the misinformation about their effects on
continental wildlife and therefore made them very unpopular animals. Cats
were transported to islands around the world to control rodents, and they
also prey on ground nesting birds. There are usually no mammalian predators
on islands for birds to adjust to, so they have little defense mechanism
against the imported cats, mongooses or rats. Even on islands, cats often
eat dead birds and other carrion as well as the introduced rodents.

Feral cats in both urban and island environments often are hungry,
which contradicts their image as wanton killers. In her book Maverick Cats,
Ellen Perry Berkley reports that on San Nichols Island, 22.5 percent of
ferals showed mottled livers, a sign of inadequate diet. Ferals sometimes
fall prey to avian predators in island environments. The Galapagos Hawk, for
example, preys on feral kittens.



Cats as Rodent Specialists



Ethologist Paul Leyhausen considers the domestic cat generally as a
rodent specialist, because its preferred sit-and-wait strategy is much
better suited to catching mice and young rabbits. Cats will wait for hours
outside burrows for these animals to come out. Even though birds can fly in
any direction and are more difficult to catch, some cats seem to become bird
specialists and learn to raid nests and burrows for ground nesting birds.



A wildlife biologist recently said that researchers were "obsessively
preoccupied with predation by cats and often overlooked other causes of
wildlife depletion." An investigative journalist found many U.S. researchers
using the Stanley Temple study in Wisconsin and the Churcher study in
Britain, were unaware of the international studies conducted during the past
forty years, all clearly reflecting the predominance of feline predation on
mammals over birds.

The Temple study was done in a rural area and the figures were
extrapolated across the state. The Churcher study of 70 cats in a rural area
brought about an outcry that cats were killing 100 million birds and small
mammals in Britain each year.



Roger Tabor, British naturalist and biologist, says of the study: "It
is not realistic to multiply the numbers of catches of these (70) rural cats
by the entire cat population of Britain. Most cats are town cats with small
ranges, and catch fewer items of prey than the village cats of this survey.
The mesmeric effect of big numbers seems to have stultified reason."



Tabor goes on to say the survey found the house cat is a "significant
predator" and not that it was devastating Britain's bird population.
Although a quarter of the town's house sparrows were consumed by cats each
year, after each breeding season the sparrow population doubled. In winter
many people feed garden birds, while nest boxes and domestic buildings
provide additional nesting sites and in this way bird populations are kept
well above "natural" levels.



The stomach contents of cats confirm that they are specialized
predators of small mammals. Berkley details six studies from 1936 to 1957 in
various states in the U.S. In these studies the stomach content of feral
cats was analyzed. The results confirmed mammals make up the largest
percentage of food in those cats relying solely on hunting. Results from two
studies follow:

1940, Oregon: Mammals 61.8%, Birds 18.9%, Carrion 10.7%, Garbage 8.3%.

1941, Oklahoma: Mammals 55%, Garbage 26.5%, Insects 12.5%, Birds 4%,
Reptiles 2%.



A New Zealand study showed mammals account for 93% of consumed food
and birds 4.5%. In Australia, biologists Brian Coman and Hans Brunner
concluded after studying feral cats that mammals made up 88% of the diet and
birds 5.2%. They reported:

"The common belief that feral cats are serious predators of birds is
apparently without basis. Although birds were common in all sampling areas,
they were a relatively minor item in the diet. Presumably, other factors
such as difficulty of capture are responsible for the low intake of birds."



A study in Pennsylvania in 1954 found the food of urban feral cats
consisted of 85% garbage and 15% rodents and birds.

The following is a good summary of the conclusions reached by many
biologists after studying cats, predation and wildlife on four continents:
Europe (13 studies), North America (12 studies), Australia (9 studies), and
Africa (1 study). The diet of cats has also been studied on 22 islands from
the equator to latitude 57 (see the Bibliography).

C. J. Mead, 1982:

"[T]he birds in suburban and rural parts of Britain have coexisted
with cats for hundreds of generations, and they may now be under less
pressure from cats than they were in the past from the assorted natural
predators. Any bird populations on the continents that could not withstand
these levels of predation from cats and other predators would have
disappeared long ago. But populations of birds on oceanic islands have
evolved in circumstances in which predation from mammalian predators was
negligible and they, and any other island vertebrates, are therefore
particularly vulnerable to predation when cats have been inroduced."

B. M. Fitzgerald summarizes his findings of the feral cat diets by
stating:

"On all continents birds are usually much less important than mammals;
birds were present on average at 21% frequency of occurance, and mammals at
68%."

These biologists agree with Tabor,

"In terms of the cats as threats to wildlife, generally for countries
like Britain and America where other species have coexisted with the cat
family predators for a long time, cats are no more harmful than other
predators. Only in cases of small islands and the unique circumstances of
Australia has the effect of cats, both feral and domestic, been very
harmful. In biological systems it is insufficient merely to have found one
animal will eat another, that, after all, is what predators do - but is that
predation pressure within normal limits? Is the prime predator the cat?"

Tabor concludes by suggesting, "disturbances by man" should be
considered.



Double Standards

At this time in history when the human population causes so much
destruction to the earth, we need to remind ourselves of our species'
responsibility and consider our 'double standards'. We often excuse or
ignore the devastation done to the environment by humans and the results of
this destruction on our wildlife. Urban sprawl, shopping malls, road
building, golf courses, etc. all play a part in reducing habitat and food
sources and all have negative effects on wildlife. We poison our air with
exhaust fumes from over 120 million automobiles and spray 4 billion pounds
of pesticides into the atmosphere annually. The WorldWatch Institute cites
deforestation due to razing of forests for croplands, pastures and real
estate as one of the major factors contributing to the loss of all birds,
including songbirds.



There are 14,136 golf courses nationwide, each of which uses 150 acres
of land. Each acre is treated with 18 pounds of pesticides annually.
Pesticide use causes enormous losses in bird populations. In the U.S., 220
million acres have been deforested for livestock production, yet
environmentalists are eager to eradicate all alien and introduced species
except cattle. Rather than blaming cats for so many of our problems, perhaps
we should look toward modifying our lifestyles and animal-based agriculture,
so destructive to natural ecosystems, and move toward methods which are less
damaging to our environment.



Why American Songbirds Have Vanished

Although songbird populations are declining, other birds such as
blackbirds and greenfinches, blue jays and brown-headed cowbirds (both
nestling-eating predators) are exploding. Year-round U.S. bird residents are
stable or increasing in numbers, indicating the need for serious
consideration and urgent attention to reasons why songbirds are in decline.
Blaming cats for songbird decline is a facile and simplistic solution to a
complex problem.



Professor John Terborgh of Duke University reports in the May 1992
issue of Scientific American that little can be done about restoring
songbirds in rural and suburban areas and conservation efforts should be
directed towards consolidating and expanding large tracts of forest, such as
the Smokies and Adirondacks, to maximize habitat for nesting birds. Another
suggestion is for farmers to practice fallowing their fields every two to
three years. He also mentions the damage done by clear-cutting national
forests and overgrazing federal lands.



More than 250 species of song birds migrate south of U.S. borders.
Tropical deforestation is occurring at the rate of 142,000 to 200,000 square
kilometers each year, an area roughly the size of Florida. At this rate the
world's remaining tropical forests will be depleted by 2030 and many species
of songbirds will disappear along with them.

The main problem is mankind, not cats.





Bibliography

1. Berkeley, Ellen Perry, Maverick Cats, New England Press, 1992

2. Bradshaw, John, The Behavior of the Domestic Cat, Cambridge
University Press, 1988

3. Brett, Caroline, Wild Cats, Dorset Press, 1992

4. Seidensticker, Dr. John & Lumpkin, Dr. Susan (eds.), Great Cats,
Rodale Press, 1991

5. Sproule, Anna & Michael, The Complete Book of the Cat, Gallery
Books, 1989

6. Tabor, Roger, Cats. The Rise of the Cat, BBC Books, 1991

7. Tabor, Roger, The Wild Life of the Domestic Cat, Arrow Books, 1983

8. Turner, Dennis & Bateson, Patrick (eds.), The Domestic Cat,
Cambridge University Press, 1988









Understanding Cats and Predation

(from Alley Cat Action, Fall 1997)

Many studies have shown that cats do not have a detrimental impact on
wildlife on

continents. However, many people still feel that cats are to blame for the
depletion of

songbirds and other animals. Two studies most often quoted to support
placing blame on

feral cats are the Stanley Temple study and the Churcher/Lawton study. Some
individuals

and groups use these studies in misguided efforts to discredit Alley Cat
Allies' and others

work to humanely control feral cats. However, over sixty studies on feral
cats have been

written from different continents throughout the world - all showing three
very important

points: 1) Cats are opportunistic feeders, eating what is most easily
available. Feral cats are

scavengers, and many rely on garbage and handouts from people; 2) Cats are
rodent

specialists. Birds make up a small percentage of their diet when they rely
solely on hunting

for food 3) and, cats may prey on a population without destroying it. If
this were not so, we

would no longer have any mice around.

Even though some cats can become efficient hunters and do kill birds, many
international

biologists agree that only on small islands do cats pose a severe threat to
the wildlife

populations. They agree with biologist C.J. Mead that "any bird populations
on the

continents that could not withstand these levels of predation from cats and
other predators

would have disappeared long ago."

And finally, while many concentrate their efforts on blaming cats, the real
culprit, homo

sapiens, goes free; continuing the destruction of habitat, hunting, killing,
and using

pesticides that endanger entire populations of wildlife, including millions
of birds. The

following is a collection of opinions from experts who have studied feral
cat predation and

who do not blame cats for detrimentally impacting wildlife.

Opinion from the experts

The following is an excerpt from Roger Tabor's Understanding Cats, (The
Reader's

Digest Association, Inc.: New York/Montreal, 1995).

"From the mid-nineteenth century mankind's own numbers and destruction of
huge areas of

virgin planet surface have exploded exponentially. As man thrived, so did
the domestic cat

due to the massive increase in food supply for both house and feral animals
(pp. 8-9)."

"Cats hunt, catch prey, and eat it - they are carnivores. To expect them not
to hunt is

unreasonable both because of their biology and the natural order of things.
Almost

incredibly, in the USA there is a growing idea that carnivores are somehow
immoral.

Although that view may be extreme, that cats catch birds causes cat-owning
bird lovers

much concern.

"While the size of the range of rural feral cats reflects their prey
requirements, prey is not

necessary for the survival of domestic house cats, their range sizes are
independent of its

abundance. While this could make them more of a danger to wildlife, this
does not occur for

a number of reasons.. Not all house cats are competent hunters and most only
catch prey

occasionally.. Although cats are superb hunters, it is their scavenging
ability that allows

them to survive as feral-living animals and live with us eating food off a
saucer.

"Contrary to common belief, cats do not catch many birds, but mainly small
mammals.

Proportionately, town cats will catch more birds than their country cousins.
What is often

overlooked is that although cats are far more common in towns than in the
country, so are

birds! As well as feeding cats, we also feed birds. We provide artificial
nest sites in the form

of nestboxes and buildings. Our gardens provide good habitat in the form of
rich scrubland,

with excellent insect support due to an increased flowering time in the
year, and lawns with

abundant earthworms. Our actions can be seen as providing optimum conditions
to

maximize bird numbers! Consequently, when Chris Mead of the British Trust
for Ornithology

assessed the numbers of ringed garden birds caught by cats, he found that
they were not

having a harmful effect on bird populations (pp. 101-102)."

Are concerns of cat predation and effects on birds/wildlife valid?

Jeff Elliott wrote an extensive article for The Sonoma County Independent,
"The Accused,"

(March 3-16, 1994), which investigated frequently used studies that
implicate cats in the

decrease of wildlife populations. Following is an excerpt from the article
listing the studies

and his findings of their accuracy.

"But what do those studies actually say? And how good is the science in
them? Here's some

background on the two most frequently mentioned studies, cited in Cats and
Wildlife: A

Factsheet from the National Audubon Society. 'Britain's 5 million cats kill
about 20 million

birds per year.'

"Studying the hunting trophies brought home by 78 cats in a single English
village, Peter

Churcher and John Lawton found birds were 35 percent of the kill - by far
the highest

estimate in any such study. In a 1989 condensation for Natural History
magazine, they

multiplied their results by the estimated number of cats in the entire
nation. Rarely are

projections made with such limited data, except in junior high science
projects - which may

be an appropriate comparison, considering Churcher teaches at a boys'
school.

"Researchers in Wisconsin cite cats for killing 19 million songbirds.

"Doctor Stanley Temple, co-author of this frequently quoted work, seemed
exasperated

when asked again to rehash his findings. 'The media has had a field day with
this since we

started,' he sighed. Those figures were from our proposal. They aren't
actual data; that was

just our projection to show how bad it might be.' No one interviewed has
seen Temple's

unpublished research.

"But the [Sonoma County] supervisors appeared to give special attention to a
letter written

by Drs. Peter Connors and Victor Chow, UC/Davis researchers working at the
Bodega Marine

Laboratory. By projecting the numbers cited from Wisconsin and Great
Britain, they

estimated 500,000 Sonoma County birds are killed by cats annually. In a
telephone

interview, Connors said he has read only the condensation of the British
study and has seen

only "extracted forms" of Temple's work, which of course were guesstimates
for the

proposal. He was surprised to learn this study was unpublished. 'Look, we're
not cat

researchers,' said Connors. 'I've never worked with cats at all; I'm an
ornithologist.' Then

what expertise does he have about cats? 'Vic (Chow) has been participating
in a mentor

program with Piner High School students on a project tracking feral cats,'
he explained. 'We

had (radio transmitter) collars on three animals. We didn't do a full study;
it's just a

program with high school students.'"

The following is an excerpt from Peter Neville's Claws and Purrs:
Understanding

the Two Sides of Your Cat (Sidgwick and Jackson: London, 1992), p. 164. Mr.

Neville is the Director of the Center of Applied Pet Ethology in the United
Kingdom.

"In England, at least, there is no evidence to suggest that the occasional
high mortality of

birds due to pet cats has had any damaging effect on even one species of
bird, however

distressing to birds, bird lovers and cat owners that predation may be.

"In any case, as we have seen, the strategy used by cats for catching birds
is not hugely

successful at the best of times and only increases in efficiency when the
birds stalked are

more vulnerable or less able to escape."

B.M. Fitzgerald, Ecology Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial

Research, New Zealand Mead has studied various aspects of feral cats (home

range, effect on birdlife, food) and the effects of various predators on
local

wildlife, since 1970, in New Zealand.

"As Mead (1982) emphasized, the birds in suburban and rural parts of Britain
have coexisted

with cats for hundreds of generations. And they may now be under less
pressure

from cats than they were in the past from a variety of assorted natural
predators. Any bird

populations on the continents that could not withstand these levels of
predation from cats

and other predators would have disappeared long ago."

The following is an excerpt from Gary J. Patronek's, VMD, Ph.D. Tufts
University,

"Letter to Editor," Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association,
Vol.

209, No. 10, November 15, 1996.

"If the real objection to managed colonies is that it is unethical to put
cats in a situation

where they could potentially kill any wild creature, then the ethical issue
should be debated

on its own merits without burdening the discussion with highly speculative
numerical

estimates for either wildlife mortality or cat predation. Whittling down
guesses or

extrapolations from limited observations by a factor of 10 or even 100 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.

"If asking for reasonable data to support the general assertion that
wildlife mortality across

the United States attributable to cat predation is unacceptably high can be
construed as

'attempting to minimize the impact,' then I am guilty as charged. 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."

The following is an excerpt from a speech by John Terborgh (Director of the
Center

for Tropical Conservation, Duke University) at The Manomet Symposium in
1989,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

"The global environmental crisis has caught up with migratory birds. There
are simply too

many people making ever increasing demands on a fixed supply of resources.
It is

inconceivable that we can continue on the same reckless path for very long.

"The conversion of forests to cropland, pasture and urban sprawl, the
downgrading of virgin

stands to second growth, and the conversion of mixed forests to pine
monocultures. The

inescapable implication of this for conservation is that there is only a
limited amount of time

left in which to slow human population growth and to institute other
fundamental changes in

the countries of this hemisphere or many of our migratory birds will be
little more than

memories.

"One country after another will pass the 100 per square kilometer population
threshold in

the coming two or three decades. After this has happened, there is really
not much that can

be done to salvage winter habitat for migratory birds."

What then is responsible for the decreasing number of birds?

The following is an excerpt from a speech by biologist Dr. Robert Berg.

"Habitat destruction: As man's development of the planet continues,
available habitat for

animals and plants is being carved up into smaller pieces. The fragmentation
of ecosystems

separates populations genetically from each other, and if a particular
habitat is not large

enough, remnant populations contained within them are doomed due to genetic
inbreeding.

If there are not enough large areas, chance occurrences such as an extremely
harsh winter,

floods, localized disease, etc., can drive remaining populations to the
brink of extinction.

"Some species are dependent on environmental policy in more than one place.
One

endangered species of bird, Bachman's warbler, is disappearing not because
there is a

scarcity of riverine swampland in the (Southeast) United States in which it
breeds, but

because it used to winter in the forests of western Cuba virtually all of
which have been

cleared for sugar cane.

"In some cases other birds have been responsible for the demise of some bird
species.

Kirtland's warbler, already compressed into a small remaining jack-pine
country in Michigan,

was subjected to nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird laying its eggs
in their

nests. The baby cowbirds push the Kirtland's own young from the nest and are
then raised

by these hapless birds. The European starling has spread across the United
States since its

introduction in the early 1900's, depriving many of our resident and less
aggressive birds of

habitat. In the words of Pogo, 'We have met the enemy and he is us.'"


















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  #40  
Old February 3rd 04, 12:38 AM
Cheryl
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Phil P wrote in k.net
on 02 Feb 2004:

This information is courtesy of Alley Cat Allies (ACA). Many thanks to
them!


So much good info in this article but regretably, I had to snip all but
a little I wanted to comment on. Thanks for taking the time to post
this.

Many zoologists have observed that feral cats are mostly scavengers,
hanging out next to dumpsters to wait for a hand out. Peter Neville, a
pet behaviorist and author of many books on cats, worked in England
for two decades with feral colonies. Neville states, "a deliberate
strategy of scavenging has enabled many feral cats almost to give up
hunting altogether. They may learn instead to lie around waste bins of
hotels for fresh supplies or to cadge from well-meaning human
providers in urban areas."


With just a small number of feral cats to observe here, I've noticed
that the behavior of scavenging and/or waiting for handouts is mainly
the way they find food. Only one here I'd noticed hunted, and he only
hunted baby squirrels and mice/voles. My own feral Bonnie doesn't seem
to know how to hunt and is learning to simulate it through play. She
won't eat meat, won't eat any wet food at all and only eats dry cat food
since that was what I left out last winter when she was a small kitten
before I trapped her. One thing I've noticed with the stalking action
is that once they set their sites on their "prey" (toy in this case)
they are relentless at trying to capture it. The "game" can only end
once it has been caught or else I end up with panting, overtired
kitties. Sometimes it takes a while for the first pounce, but once it
begins, they will do backflips trying to get the toy. Fascinating to
watch and observe.


Double Standards

At this time in history when the human population causes so much
destruction to the earth, we need to remind ourselves of our species'
responsibility and consider our 'double standards'. We often excuse or
ignore the devastation done to the environment by humans and the
results of this destruction on our wildlife



So true. This statement, and the one that follows:


The main problem is mankind, not cats.


--
Cheryl

Trapped like rats. In a chia-pet.
MIB II
 




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