03-30-2009, 05:34 AM
That is a poor comparison for anywhere besides a very remote islet without people and with penguins. If there were rabbits, rats, and mice present they should have known from the get-go that they were part of the problem. A much better example for Hawaii is the link I gave above, where removing the predators worked. My point is that a profound pro-cat bias pervades the whole controversy.
You can walk through Waikiki and see those black bait stations for rat poison tucked here and there. There is no attempt to hide them. A maintenance worker setting them out would not draw a second glance. No one cares about the rats and so society is free to deal with the problem in whatever means works best. Contrast this with cats that have a status as pets. Look at how people sometimes allow their pets to cause problems for others by letting their cat hunt under the neighbor's bird feeder or crap in the neighbor's yard (dogs too), then consider how much worse that problem becomes when people adopt feral cats as pseudo-pets for a couple of hours a day but take no responsibility for the animal the rest of the time, all because of the sacred status of cats as companion animals. This would never be tolerated for any pest species. A maintenance worker setting out poison bait stations for cats would probably be lynched. It is necessary for traps to be used so that people think the animal is going to the humane society to be adopted, whereas the reality is that for countless cats it is a one-way trip.
Removal can work, as the link above shows. What does it say about the controversy that an example from here in Hawaii is ignored in favor of an example from another part of the world that has penguins? I'll agree, we won't lose any penguins to feral cats.
TNR programs deal with the problem of perception and draw a lot of volunteer manpower. That is true. However I can not be convinced that TNR has any positive impact overall. It is touted as humane but it relies on competition between the colony cats and those other cats "out there" that TNR proponents agree exist. This is the crux of the situation for me. If there are that many cats in the environment, and I think that there are, then TNR is just playing favorites for the pleasure of the participants. I see the benefit of TNR programs as mitigating the harm that uncontrolled cat feeding would otherwise cause, because half of the problem is compulsive human behavior.
You can walk through Waikiki and see those black bait stations for rat poison tucked here and there. There is no attempt to hide them. A maintenance worker setting them out would not draw a second glance. No one cares about the rats and so society is free to deal with the problem in whatever means works best. Contrast this with cats that have a status as pets. Look at how people sometimes allow their pets to cause problems for others by letting their cat hunt under the neighbor's bird feeder or crap in the neighbor's yard (dogs too), then consider how much worse that problem becomes when people adopt feral cats as pseudo-pets for a couple of hours a day but take no responsibility for the animal the rest of the time, all because of the sacred status of cats as companion animals. This would never be tolerated for any pest species. A maintenance worker setting out poison bait stations for cats would probably be lynched. It is necessary for traps to be used so that people think the animal is going to the humane society to be adopted, whereas the reality is that for countless cats it is a one-way trip.
Removal can work, as the link above shows. What does it say about the controversy that an example from here in Hawaii is ignored in favor of an example from another part of the world that has penguins? I'll agree, we won't lose any penguins to feral cats.
TNR programs deal with the problem of perception and draw a lot of volunteer manpower. That is true. However I can not be convinced that TNR has any positive impact overall. It is touted as humane but it relies on competition between the colony cats and those other cats "out there" that TNR proponents agree exist. This is the crux of the situation for me. If there are that many cats in the environment, and I think that there are, then TNR is just playing favorites for the pleasure of the participants. I see the benefit of TNR programs as mitigating the harm that uncontrolled cat feeding would otherwise cause, because half of the problem is compulsive human behavior.