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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 http://www.angelswish.org/feralprogram.html Ashmole, NP, Ashmole, MJ, Simmons, KEL. Seabird conservation and feral cats on Ascension Island, South Atlantic. In Nettleship DN, Burger J, Gochfeld M, Eds. Seabirds on islands: threats, case studies and action plans. BirdLife Conservation Series No.1. BirdLife International, 1994;94-121. Barratt DG. 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Mahlow JC, Slater MR. Current issues in the control of stray and feral cats. J Am Vet Med Assoc 1996; 209:2016-2020. Mahood IT. The feral cat. Refresher course for veterinarians. Proceedings of the Sydney University Postgraduate Committee of Veterinary Science No 53. 1980;447-456. The Mammal Society. Look what the cat's brought in! Mammal Fact Sheets. April 1998. http:www.mammal.org.uk/catkills.htm (29 November 1998). Mantovani A. The role of animals in the epidemiology of the mycoses. Mycopathologia 1978;65:61-66. Marshall WH. A note on the food habits of feral cats on Little Barrier Island, New Zealand. N Zeal J Sci 1961;4:822-824. Matheson C. The domestic cat as a factor in urban ecology. J Anim Ecol 1944;13:130-133. May RM. Control of feline delinquency. Nature 1988;332:392-393. May, S. A. Norton, T. W. Influence of fragmentation and disturbance on the potential impact of feral predators on native fauna in Australian forest ecosystems. Wildlife Research. 1996. 23: 4, 387-400. McCullough WF, Foster BG, Diesch SL. Prevalence of Toxoplasma antibodies in wild mammals collected on three Iowa farms. Bull Wildl Disease Assoc 1967;3:30-31. McGrath M. Domestic concerns about feral cats. Letter.J Am Vet Med Assoc 1996;208:1961. McKenna PB, Charleston WAG. Coccidia (Protozoa:Sporozoaside) of cats and dogs. I. Identify and prevalence in cats. N Zeal Vet J 1980;28:86-88. McMurry FB, Sperry CC. Food of feral house cats in Oklahoma, a progress report. J Mammal 1941;22:185-190. Mead CJ. Ringed birds killed by cats. Mammal Review 1982;12:183-186. Merton DV. Chapter 15. Controlling introduced predators and competitors on islands. In: Temple SA, ed. Endangered birds. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1977:121-128. Miller J. The domestic cat: perspective on the nature and diversity of cats. J Am Vet Med Assoc 1996;208:498-502. Milstein, T. C. Goldsmid, J. M. Parasites of feral cats from southern Tasmania and their potential significance. Australian Veterinary Journal. 1997. 75: 3, 218-219. Mirmovitch V. Spatial organization of urban feral cats (Felis catus) in Jerusalem. Wildl Res 1995;22:299-310. Mitchell JC, Beck RA. Free-ranging domestic cat predation on native vertebrates in rural and urban Virginia. Virg J Science 1992; 43:197-207. Moller, H. Alterio, N. Home range and spatial organisation of stoats (Mustela erminea), ferrets (Mustela furo) and feral house cats (Felis catus) on coastal grasslands, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand: implications for yellow-eyed penguin (Megadyptes antipodes) conservation. New Zealand Journal of Zoology. 1999. 26: 3, 165-174. Morris J. Island tamers. Animal Watch (ASPCA) 1996;Winter:16. Mtambo MMA, Nash AS, Blewett DA, Smith HV, Wright S. Cryptosporidium infection in cats: prevalence of infection in domestic and feral cats in the Glasgow area. Vet Record 1991;129:502-504. Mullens A. MD's respond quickly to toxoplasmosis outbreak in BC. Can Med Assoc J 1996;154:1721-1724. Murphy LC, Cardeilhas PT, Carr JW. The prevalence of leptospiral agglutinins in sera of the domestic cat. Cornell Vet 1958;48:3-10. Murray AE. Rapid development of shock following cat scratch injury in a previously fit middle-aged woman. J Infection 1991;22:307-308. Nassar R, Mosier JE, Williams LW. Study of the feline and canine population in the Greater Las Vegas area. Am J Vet Res 1984;45:282-7. Natoli E, de Vito E. Agonistic behaviour, dominance rank and copulatory success in a large multi-male feral cat, Felis catus L., colony in central Rome. Anim Behav 1991;42:227-241. Natoli E. Behavioural responses of urban feral cats to different types of urine marks. Behaviour 1985:77:234-243. Natoli E. Spacing pattern in a colony of urban stray cats (Felis catus L.) in the historic centre of Rome. Appl Anim Behav Sci 1985:289-304. Natoli E. Urban feral cats (Felis catus L.): perspectives for a demographic control respecting the psycho-biological welfare of the species. Ann. 1st. Super. 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A review of the diet of feral domestic cats (Felis silvestris f. catus) on the Canary Islands, with new data from the forests of La Gomera. Zeitschrift Fuer Saeugetierkunde 1996;61:1-6. Norbury G, McGlinchy A. The impact of rabbit control on predator sightings in the semi-arid high country of South Island, New Zealand. Wildl Res 1996; 23:93-97. Oppenheimer EC. Felis catus: Population densities in an urban area. Carnivore Genetics Newsletter 1980;4:72-80. Page RJC, Ross J, Bennett DH. A study of the home ranges, movements and behaviour of the feral cat population at Avonmouth docks. Wildl Res 1992;19:263-277. Panaman R. Behaviour and ecology of free-ranging female farm cats (Felis catus L.). Z Tierpsyychol 1981;56:59-73. Parmalee PW. Food habits of the feral house cat in east-central Texas. J Wildl Mgmt 1953;17:375-376. Passanisi WC, Macdonald DW. The fate of controlled feral cat colonies. Hertfordshire, England: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, 1990. Patton S, Johnson SL, Loeffler DG, Wrigth BG, Jensen JM. Epizootic of toxoplasmosis in kangaroos, wallabies, and potaroos: possible transmission via domestic cats. J Am Vet Med Assoc 1986;189:1166-1169. Pearson OP. Additional measurements of the impact of carnivores on California voles. J Mammal 1971;52:41-49. Pehrsson S. Friends of the friendless. Cats Magazine 1995;August. Petcare Information and Advisory Service. The metropolitan domestic cat: A survey of the population characteristics and hunting behaviour of the domestic cat in Australia. Reark Research Pty Ltd. Survey Research Report CM 5946 TH/JM. 1994. Piccoli, L. Farina, L Pet therapy in the street environment: people caring for feral cat colonies. [Italian] Sisca Observer. 1997. 1: 1, 42-43 Polsky RH. Hunger, prey feeding, and predatory aggression. Behav biol 1975;13:81-93. Powers NR, Mehr ZA, Calamaio CA, Torring E, Longfield R, Fournier PV, and Rawlings JA. Prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi in feral cats. 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Steere AC, Broderick TF, Malawista SE. Erythema chronicum migrans and lyme arthritis: epidemiologic evidence for a tick vector. Am J Epidemiol 1978;108:312-321. Stultz TB. Veterinarians, HSUS call feral cat ordinance step in the right direction. DVM 1996;March:3s,6s. Suttel RD. CDC pinpoints cats as vectors of human plague. DVM 1994;25:1,15-16. Tabor R. General biology of feral cats. In: The ecology and control of feral cats. Potters Bar, England:The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, 1981;5-11. Tegner H. Wild feral cats. Wildlife 1976; 18:76-79. Terborgh J. Why American songbirds are vanishing. Scentific American 1992;May:98-104. Teutsch SM, Juranke DD, Sulzer A, Dubey JP, Sikes RK. Epidemic toxoplasmosis associated with infected cats. N Eng J Med 1979;300:695-699. Toner GC. House cat predation on small animals. J Mammal 1956;37:119. Triggs B, Brunner H, Cullen JM. The food of fox, dog, and cat in Croajinngalong National Park, South-Eastern Victoria. Aust J Wildl Res 1984;11:491-499. Turner DC, Meister O. Hunting behaviour of the domestic cat. In: Turner DC, Bateson P, eds. The domestic cat. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988;111-121. Turner DC, Mertens C. Home range size, overlap and exploitation in domestic farm cats (Felis catus). Behaviour 1986;99:22-45. van Aarde RJ. Population biology and control of feral cats on Marion Island. Acta Zool Fennica 1984;172:107-110. van Aarde RJ. The cats of Marion Island: friend or foe? African Wildlife 1979;32:30-32. van Aarde RJ. The diet and feeding behavior of feral cats, Felis catus at Marion Island. S Afr J Wildl Res 1980;10:123-128. van Rensburg PJJ, Bester MN. Experiments in feral cat population reduction by hunting on Marion Island. S Afr J Wildl Res 1988;18:47-50. van Rensburg PJJ, Skinner JD, van Aarde RJ. Effects of feline panleukopaenia on the population characteristics of feral cats on Marion Island. J Appl Ecol 1987;24:63-73. Veitch CR, Bell BD. 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J Small Anim Pract 1995;36:279-81. Wall PG, Threlfall EJ, Ward LR, Rowe B. Mulitresistant Salmonella typhimurium DT104 in cats: a public health risk. Letter The Lancet 1996:1548. Wallace GD, Marshall L, Marshall M. Cats, rats and toxoplasmosis on a small pacific island. Am J Epidemiol 1972;95:475-482. Walsberg GE. The use of wild birds in research. The Condor 1994;96:1119-1120. Warner RD. Occurrence and impact of zoonoses in pet dogs and cats at US Air Force bases. Am J Pub Health 1984;74:1239-1242. Warner RE. Demography and movements of free-ranging domestic cats in rural Illinois. J Wildl Mgmt 1985;49:340-346. Watkins TH. The wild and the unwild. Audubon 1997;99(2): 128. Watson J, Warman C, Todd D, Laboundallon V. The Seychelles magpie robin Copsychus-seychellarum ecology and conservation of endangered species. Biolog Conserv 1992; 61:93-106. Webster JP. Prevalence and transmission of Toxoplasma gondii in wild brown rats, Rattus norvegicus. Parasitol 1994;108:407-411. Wilcove DS. Nest predation in forest tracts and the decline of migratory songbirds. Ecol 1985;66:1211-1214. Wills JM, Howard PE, Gruffydd-Jones TJ, Wathes CM. Prevalence of Chlamydia psittaci in different cat populations in Britain. J Sm Anim Pract 1988;29:327-339. Wolski TR. Country cousin: the life of the barnyard cat. Feline Health Perspectives (Cornell Feline Health Center) 1981;June:1-3. Wickstrom, M. Thomas, M. Henderson, R. Eason, C. T. Development and evaluation of baits for feral cat control. Science for Conservation. Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand: 1999. No. 127, 67-74. Yamane, A. Emoto, J. Ota, N. Factors affecting feeding order and social tolerance to kittens in the group-living feral cat (Felis catus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 1997. 52: 1/2, 119-127. Yamane, A. Doi, T. Ono, Y. Mating behaviors, courtship rank and mating success of male feral cat (Felis catus).Journal of Ethology. 1996. 14: 1, 35-44 Yamane A. Ono Y, Doi T. Home range size and spacing pattern of a feral cat population on a small island. J Mammal Soc Japan 1994; 19:9-20. Yanagawa Y, Maruyama T, Sakai S. Isolation of Yersinia enterocolitica and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis from apparently healthy dogs and cats. Microbiol Immunol 1978;22:643-646. Young S. Colonies in hospitals. In: The ecology and control of feral cats. Potters Bar, England:The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, 1981:83-85. Young S. The kindest cut. New Scientist 1990;December 22/29:81. Zaunbrecher KI, Smith RE. Neutering of feral cats as an alternative to eradication programs. J Am Vet Med Assoc 1993;203:449-452. HTH, Phil |
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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 |
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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 |
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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) |
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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) |
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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 |
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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 |
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"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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"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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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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