The uphill efforts of the trap/spay-neuter/release advocates has been struck another blow, in Texas this time, with the proclamations of a "wildlife expert," whose domain is filled with stuffed animals, fish and game.
Duane Schlitter is assistant curator of the Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collections, a repository for dead animal specimens near the A&M campus. One might think he spends too much time dealing with dead animals to appreciate live ones. Indeed, he does not appreciate feral cats, and he is joined in his campaign against them by Don Clark, wildlife Biologist associated with the U.S. Geological Survey, and adjunct faculty member in the wildlife program at A&M; along with Tom Lacher, a professor of wildlife science at the University. While Schlitter considers the cats "weeds" to be dealt with appropriately, Clark believes killing the cats is not a radical idea, citing the efforts of officials in Australia to exterminate feral cats. (See " Wonderland" for more information on this topic.)
Killing is NOT the answer!
The justification in the thinking of these three men can be found in the campus news article, linked in the adjoining sidebar, but basically, it is the same old debate of wildlife conservationists vs feral cats. For some inexplicable reason the former group always seems to consider killing feral cats the solution for what is (in their opinion) a problem of "ferals killing millions of birds and other animals nationally every year." Without debating the accuracy of these largely unsupported figures, let it be known that KILLING feral cats simply does not solve the increasing population problem of ferals, nor guarantee the elimination of predation.
Furthermore, cats are basically lazy animals and, when given a choice of hunting for prey or feeding from a dumpster or meals provided by volunteers, they will always opt for the easy way out. Wouldn't you? When existing cats are removed from a feral colony and killed, new cats simply move in, and the breeding-population explosion continues in full force. Alley Cat Allies has this to say about killing feral cats:
- Attempts to eradicate whole colonies of cats usually fail because the ecological vacuum created is soon filled by other strays. Unmanaged colonies are often regarded as a nuisance because of territorial behavior such as spraying, fighting, and caterwauling during mating periods. Stabilizing the colony by neutering results in healthier animals and much of their undesirable behavior is eliminated.
( my emphasis).
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