07-25-2017, 06:12 PM
Attached is a highly interesting, detailed (2016) article on the problems caused by Hawaii’s feral cats--not just to our seabirds, but to monk seals, through transmission of the parasite toxoplasmosis, which cats apparently spread.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2127956/ha...ombie-cats
Monday night the TV news reported that DLNR on Kauai is getting the go-ahead to begin killing feral cats. (Could not find a link today, unfortunately.)
No doubt the animal rights activists will be out in force objecting. When Australia announced its giant cat kill proposal, activists decried the pending “massacre of 2 million small Cecils the Lion. “A devastating attack on these innocent animals,” one activist lamented. (Of course we are supposed to ignore the heavy toll on Australia native species. And our native species re a Hawaii cull.) Moronic.
The story, with its provocative descriptor zombie cats, takes major issue with the TNR people—trap, neuter, return. Focusing on prominent TNR advocate Basil Scott, the article states:
“The problem with Scott’s arguments...is that the majority of the evidence doesn’t support them. “Basil’s an engineer, so he knows all the lingo,” says Bill Lucey, who heads up the Kauai Invasive Species Committee... “But basically he takes a lie and he repeats it over and over. ‘TNR works, TNR works, TNR works,’ like if he says it enough it will come true.”
(Same thing with Hawaii’s shark protectors, who famously claim culling does not work. In other words, fewer sharks do not equal fewer attacks, regardless of how much the shark population is reduced. Just repeat the same thing over again. And again. And again. The public will believe your message. [To people with specific knowledge here, yes I am referring Wetherbee, et al.’s 1994 paper.]).
Hope we can ramp up a feral cat killing program on Hawaii Island. A lot of TNR people are feeding cats near UH-Hilo. If you love cats (and I do) get one and keep it as a pet. The article explains why TNR is harmful and has a record of failure.
(My recent commentary on animal rights extremists inexplicably drifted off into strange territory, with one poster somehow interpreting that I was predicting that we would soon be forced to be vegetarians. Another poster noted major changes regarding killing animals was probably 100-200 years away. He is correct--insofar as hunting for food goes (or maybe longer).
The topic at hand was animal rights activists’ intense antipathy for people who kill animals as pests. Feral chickens. Peacocks. Pigeons. Feral cats (which only DLNR authorized personnel should be killing.) The activists deem it as cruelty and are increasingly badgering the cops to make arrests (with the Hawaii Humane Society cheerleading such prosecutions.])
A final comment to irritate animal right fanatics: Writing about successful efforts to eradicate cats from some islands, “rangers target cats with fast-acting kill traps, or they live-trap and then shoot them in the head (methods deemed humane by the American Veterinary Medical Association)...(and)...some combination of leg-hold traps, cage traps, dogs, poison, hunting, fumigation in holes, and, according to one scientific article published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), “clubbing with sticks.”
Yes, clubbing with sticks. As humans have killed animals for.......oh, say for about 200,000 years.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2127956/ha...ombie-cats
Monday night the TV news reported that DLNR on Kauai is getting the go-ahead to begin killing feral cats. (Could not find a link today, unfortunately.)
No doubt the animal rights activists will be out in force objecting. When Australia announced its giant cat kill proposal, activists decried the pending “massacre of 2 million small Cecils the Lion. “A devastating attack on these innocent animals,” one activist lamented. (Of course we are supposed to ignore the heavy toll on Australia native species. And our native species re a Hawaii cull.) Moronic.
The story, with its provocative descriptor zombie cats, takes major issue with the TNR people—trap, neuter, return. Focusing on prominent TNR advocate Basil Scott, the article states:
“The problem with Scott’s arguments...is that the majority of the evidence doesn’t support them. “Basil’s an engineer, so he knows all the lingo,” says Bill Lucey, who heads up the Kauai Invasive Species Committee... “But basically he takes a lie and he repeats it over and over. ‘TNR works, TNR works, TNR works,’ like if he says it enough it will come true.”
(Same thing with Hawaii’s shark protectors, who famously claim culling does not work. In other words, fewer sharks do not equal fewer attacks, regardless of how much the shark population is reduced. Just repeat the same thing over again. And again. And again. The public will believe your message. [To people with specific knowledge here, yes I am referring Wetherbee, et al.’s 1994 paper.]).
Hope we can ramp up a feral cat killing program on Hawaii Island. A lot of TNR people are feeding cats near UH-Hilo. If you love cats (and I do) get one and keep it as a pet. The article explains why TNR is harmful and has a record of failure.
(My recent commentary on animal rights extremists inexplicably drifted off into strange territory, with one poster somehow interpreting that I was predicting that we would soon be forced to be vegetarians. Another poster noted major changes regarding killing animals was probably 100-200 years away. He is correct--insofar as hunting for food goes (or maybe longer).
The topic at hand was animal rights activists’ intense antipathy for people who kill animals as pests. Feral chickens. Peacocks. Pigeons. Feral cats (which only DLNR authorized personnel should be killing.) The activists deem it as cruelty and are increasingly badgering the cops to make arrests (with the Hawaii Humane Society cheerleading such prosecutions.])
A final comment to irritate animal right fanatics: Writing about successful efforts to eradicate cats from some islands, “rangers target cats with fast-acting kill traps, or they live-trap and then shoot them in the head (methods deemed humane by the American Veterinary Medical Association)...(and)...some combination of leg-hold traps, cage traps, dogs, poison, hunting, fumigation in holes, and, according to one scientific article published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), “clubbing with sticks.”
Yes, clubbing with sticks. As humans have killed animals for.......oh, say for about 200,000 years.