"Opponents are likely to continue arguing—despite mounting evidence to the contrary—that “TNR doesn’t work”, and implying that lethal removal does—again, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

This, too, should come as no surprise. If they were to acknowledge the numerous failures of lethal methods, across a range of environmental contexts, their argument house of cards would quickly collapse,"

said Peter Wolf in Vox Felina.

 

Article Highlights

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:  VOX FELINA LINK

 

Lethal removal of cats backfires (again)

 

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” —Abraham Maslow


"Just three months after an intensive culling effort, conservationists observed no difference in the area’s population of cats. Nevertheless, they describe their campaign as “effective,” arguing that lethal methods could be improved only if they were more “intense and continuous.”

Non-lethal methods, it seems, never occurred to them.

The campaign was conducted on a small peninsula, roughly 10 square miles in size, on the New Caledonian island of Grande Terre, approximately 880 miles northeast of Brisbane, Australia. Over the course of 38 days, researchers deployed 32 traps daily across an area slightly more than four square miles, capturing and then killing 36 cats [1]. In their recently published study documenting the project, the researchers describe the cull as “effective” since it resulted in the removal of “an estimated 44% of the population” (based on camera trap data).

And yet…

“Three months after the end of the culling campaign that eliminated 36 cats… no meaningful differences in the relative abundance and density of feral cats were observed in response to culling, whatever the indicator of population size considered” [1].

If this is what “effective” looks like, one wonders what it would take for these researchers to admit failure"...

This is not the first study of its kind. Research from Tasmania, published in 2015, also employed camera traps to estimate cat numbers before and after lethal removal. Following that campaign, which the researchers describe as “low-level culling,” the “minimum number of feral cats known to be alive” increased—an average of 75 percent at one site and 211 percent at another [2].

Here, too, the researchers emphasized the need for “intensity of [lethal] effort” over any consideration of non-lethal methods...

 

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:  VOX FELINA LINK

 

About Vox Felina

Vox Felina is a repository of research notes, news stories, correspondences, and associated commentary focused on a range of issues related to “the plight” of unowned, free-roaming cats in general, and trap-neuter-return (TNR) in particular. The blog format offers two significant benefits for such a project: (1) by limiting the scope of each post, I’m able to zoom in on the details—critical for understanding deeply the complexities of the topic, and (2) the hypertext and tags permit linking and cross-referencing impossible in the print domain.

The primary impetus behind Vox Felina, launched in April 2010, was the abundance of flawed science promoted by many TNR opponents, undermining any honest debate of the “feral cat” issue. Nearly seven years later, the flaws have become more glaring, the promotion unapologetically post-factual (and self-serving). The need for a rigorous, thoughtful response is, therefore, greater than ever.

There are legitimate issues to be debated regarding the efficacy, environmental impact, and morality of TNR. But attempts at an honest, productive debate are hampered—if not derailed entirely—by the dubious claims so often put forward by TNR opponents. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I’m very interested in asking better questions—the sort of questions that might stimulate a more conscientious debate of this important issue. And in any event, I feel compelled to speak out on behalf of the cats.

Peter J. Wolf