Last week, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) posted a new video on YouTube: "Trap, Neuter and Return: Bad for Cats, Disaster for Birds". The video is an old saw – rehashing the stereotype of the predatory cat – contributing to (if not responsible for) the decimation of the American bird population. Yet virtually every study that has drawn this conclusion has been discredited. In 2005, for example, a major study jointly-commissioned by the Defenders of Wildlife, the USDA Forest Service and the Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center studied bird loss and found no link to cat predation.
They concluded that the destruction of tropical habitats in the warmer climes that avian species call home during winter months was by far the major contributor. Researchers David King and John Rappole barely mentioned cats in their extensive survey of existing data, equating cat predation to that of dogs, skunks, opossums, rodents and human hikers. Further --they point out -- windows, cats, West Nile Virus, wind turbines – all those specific causes of death that are apparent in backyards – are not, at present, having any known effect on the population size of any continental bird species.
Certainly cats do hunt, but they’re opportunistic hunters – prowling for easy prey like field mice and other small rodents. Although cats can and do kill birds – the frequency is exaggerated. Many reports of bird killing take place at backyard bird feeders. These killings can easily be prevented by locating the feeders in the open – away from bushes or decks -- so cats can’t hide near them and pounce on a bird eating seed on the ground. In the open, a cat is less likely to stalk and the bird can easily fly out of reach.
If ABC’s mission is to save birds, their time would be better spent on the crux of the problem – preventing further habitat destruction. But even if their concern is preventing cats from killing birds – it’s curious why they are not equally concerned with dogs, opossum, skunks and rodents killing birds at the same rate. It’s even more curious why they would oppose TNR. Managed Trap/Neuter/Return (not “release” as they imply on their video) – is the only effective way to reduce cat numbers. If ABC believes cats are a problem for birds, shouldn’t they find fewer outdoor cats preferable to more outdoor cats?
The video maligns TNR as ineffective because caregivers sometimes fail to trap and sterilize all their cats leaving some to continue reproducing. This isn’t a failure of TNR – it’s a failure of specific colony caregivers to carry out TNR according to its management guidelines. Encouraging caregivers to follow through with TNR is more effective than giving up on the practice entirely.
ABC offers trap-neuter-remove as an alternative to trap-neuter-return as if it’s a new solution. It isn’t. It’s the animal control method of dealing with outdoor cats – and it’s been in use since the 1950's. Trap-neuter-remove is both inhumane and ineffective. It’s inhumane because it results in the killing of virtually all the cats that are “removed” , and it’s ineffective for the very reason they criticize TNR – the cats that aren’t removed continue to reproduce repopulating the colonies to the levels before the surface level cats were “removed”.
Keeping bird populations from extinction is an admirable goal -- one the entire humane community can and should get behind. But removing and killing cats in the hopes of preserving birds is inherently a bad solution – particularly when cats are not at the root of bird extinction in the first place.
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