8 ms·

I've read multiple times that there've been discussions in a few places around the world to ban cats, or certain breeding of cats to save wildlife, or birds spe

by cloths 3y ago

I've read multiple times that there've been discussions in a few places around the world to ban cats, or certain breeding of cats to save wildlife, or birds specifically. But I haven't heard any law become real, anyone?

recursive 3y ago
Seems very unlikely to happen. People like their cats.
- knodi123 3y ago
  mandatory spay/neuter with steep/progressive fines, plus ban free-roaming cats? that's a lot more achievable, and nearly as good.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Then all we need is a cat detector van and we’re good to go.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - User23 3y ago
    How exactly do you expect to enforce the ban on feral cats? Having giant cat killing operations? Because spay and neuter isn’t going to cut it. Even if it didn’t just result in selecting for not getting caught, there would still be 10-15 years of depredation while you wait for the die out.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      First of all they said free-roaming cats, not feral cats. You can't ban feral cats any more than you can ban rats or trees. And you're excluding the middle too. It's not as though any policy which isn't perfectly and totally enforced is completely ineffectual. And it's also not the case that policies that don't solve a problem completely should be discarded as pointless. In the end, to have any solution at all, you need something that a) works to some extent and b) can be agreed on by enough people to actually end up being executed. Far too often the discussion gets completely bogged down in a where a has to be accomplished utterly and completely or we shouldn't bother at all. But the only thing that's pointless is having the discussion that way, because the world just doesn't work like that.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Yep, although I don't think bans on outside cats are a good idea for several reasons. The key issue is controlling feral populations in a cultural context where large-scale hunting programs would never be tolerated by the public for obvious reasons. To do this we need to a) control the supply of fertile human-bred cats into the feral population and b) remove and neuter extant feral cats from the environment. We can accomplish both of these goals by mandating neutering and ID chips as you suggested, and temporarily banning or placing heavy restrictions on cat breeding. This will shift all the demand for pet cats onto rescued feral cats, which will finally provide the funding needed to put a dent in feral populations. In addition it should stop the flow of lost fertile cats into the environment. Now, it's not necessarily doable to train a formerly feral cat to spend the rest of its life inside. My cat lived most his life in the woods, and he completely loses his mind if he's stuck inside. No amount of toys and catnip can compensate for the ability to roam freely. And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food. There are also plenty of measures that can be taken like restricting outside cat ownership in areas with vulnerable animal populations, mandates for cats to wear bells etc.
    - logifail 3y ago
      > And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food (Genuine question) source? My impression from our neighbourhood is that outside cats - who also come and sit in our garden - are interested in birds because that's part of who they are, not just because they are hungry.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
        Tame outside cats certainly still hunt, but it's really only a hobby. Feral cats hunt for survival. N=1 here, but in about 3 years of ownership my (formerly feral) cat has killed maybe 10 house/forest mice, 2 squirrels, and 1 small bird(he presents all his prey to me, and I keep a rough count to monitor his behaviour), and most of that was before he got a flap 2 years ago. Obviously a feral cat would need to kill a lot more than that just to survive. And he's a large Norwegian forest cat living on the edge of a forest. He could go on an absolute spree if he wanted to. I think he hunted considerably more before the flap because it was often hard to tell for me he wanted to come inside. So he'd get stuck outside for longer and get hungry/bored. If you want some hard data, this seems like a good starting point: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
greazy 3y ago
Unfortunately, no me neither. I think this issue extends beyond cats, it's the uncontrolled breeding of animals, which imo leads to all sorts of abuse. I find it amazing that anyone can decide I'm going to buy a breeding pair of cats with the end goal of making money. We need to phase out cats and dogs completely. This saddens me deeply because I love my dog but the damage these animals do to the environment is so large I don't think I can truly fathom. We can do this slowly, first pets needs to be desexed. For cats there's no exception. For dogs the exception would be breeding working dogs, or therapy/guide dogs. With cats they must be kept in doors at all times. These laws should extend to larger animals like horses. In Australia we have a huge problem with horses and camels. But the public do not support culls of horses, even if it's for their own benefit (eg to stop them from starving in winter). But the horse racing industry is huge here, they've got clout and political pressure. Uncontrolled breeding of animals for human enjoyment is amoral. Animal companionship is of course the exception but this comes with issues.
- thousand_nights 3y ago
  is this satire?
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Pretty sure it’s just bad logic informed by propaganda.
    - greazy 3y ago
      Excuse me what propaganda? This is informed opinion.
      - nuxi 3y ago
        If one was to replace "cats/dogs/animals/horses" in your statements with "humans", one could get another informed opinion. A bit cynical perhaps, but informed nonetheless.
watwut 3y ago
Cats roamed free for hundreds and hundreds years now. It is not like their presence was a new change.
- carstenhag 3y ago
  They used to only be outside, and were sometimes fed when they lived on a farm. Nowadays pretty much all roaming ones still get fed at home.
- dano 3y ago
  A primary difference is that cats were introduced into environments as a non-native species and have become the apex predator. This is especially true in New Zealand and Australia. Unlike native carnivorous mammals such as the Tasmanian Devil, Quall's, and Bandicoots, cats hunt for food and sport rather than act as scavengers. Cats in Tasmania have no natural predators other than humans. I've had many cats for pets and yet in an unbalanced environment short of predators, they really can cause tremendous damage. Short of an all out ban, keeping them indoors or in a catery or controlled in some manner seems reasonable.
  - wtflick 3y ago
    This whole argument of 'non-native' irks me, with animals and plants. Most everything was non-native at some point. I mean of course it depends on (potentially huge) timelines but at some point in the past land bridges between continents didn't exist and then existed and then didn't exist. At some point some seed got lucky enough to be carried across a sea either by an animal or just wind. I know this is a naive point of view, but nature adapts pretty well to this, it's kinda _what it does_, even if in the short-term and from a human lens it causes damage. What does damage mean exactly.. a drop in population of some particular species or plant that we are used to having in an area. Are we sure that's damage and not just normal evolution of ecosystems? I certainly prefer that to happen than have local governments pass laws saying cats must be kept inside, lest they upset the environment that us humans are used to.
    - solardev 3y ago
williamcotton 3y ago
I think at least one small town in New Zealand has banned domestic cats specifically because of the impact on flightless birds.
- dj_gitmo 3y ago
  Cats also devour New Zealand’s indigenous ground bats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tailed_bat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tai... > The bat roosts are very vulnerable, as they contain more potential prey within a single area. If these roosts were found by a predator, they could experience mass mortality events; in one incident, 102 lesser short-tailed bat deaths were caused by a single house cat in central North Island.
throwaway87651 3y ago
Canberra requires cats born from 1 July 2022 to be kept indoors. https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domestic-animals/cats/cat-containment https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domest...
throwaway290 3y ago
Many countries have been doing it for years. Seen a cat with a clipped ear? Those were caught and neutered to control cat population.

by cloths 3y ago

recursive 3y ago

Seems very unlikely to happen. People like their cats.

knodi123 3y ago
mandatory spay/neuter with steep/progressive fines, plus ban free-roaming cats? that's a lot more achievable, and nearly as good.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Then all we need is a cat detector van and we’re good to go.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- User23 3y ago
  How exactly do you expect to enforce the ban on feral cats? Having giant cat killing operations? Because spay and neuter isn’t going to cut it. Even if it didn’t just result in selecting for not getting caught, there would still be 10-15 years of depredation while you wait for the die out.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    First of all they said free-roaming cats, not feral cats. You can't ban feral cats any more than you can ban rats or trees. And you're excluding the middle too. It's not as though any policy which isn't perfectly and totally enforced is completely ineffectual. And it's also not the case that policies that don't solve a problem completely should be discarded as pointless. In the end, to have any solution at all, you need something that a) works to some extent and b) can be agreed on by enough people to actually end up being executed. Far too often the discussion gets completely bogged down in a where a has to be accomplished utterly and completely or we shouldn't bother at all. But the only thing that's pointless is having the discussion that way, because the world just doesn't work like that.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Yep, although I don't think bans on outside cats are a good idea for several reasons. The key issue is controlling feral populations in a cultural context where large-scale hunting programs would never be tolerated by the public for obvious reasons. To do this we need to a) control the supply of fertile human-bred cats into the feral population and b) remove and neuter extant feral cats from the environment. We can accomplish both of these goals by mandating neutering and ID chips as you suggested, and temporarily banning or placing heavy restrictions on cat breeding. This will shift all the demand for pet cats onto rescued feral cats, which will finally provide the funding needed to put a dent in feral populations. In addition it should stop the flow of lost fertile cats into the environment. Now, it's not necessarily doable to train a formerly feral cat to spend the rest of its life inside. My cat lived most his life in the woods, and he completely loses his mind if he's stuck inside. No amount of toys and catnip can compensate for the ability to roam freely. And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food. There are also plenty of measures that can be taken like restricting outside cat ownership in areas with vulnerable animal populations, mandates for cats to wear bells etc.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food (Genuine question) source? My impression from our neighbourhood is that outside cats - who also come and sit in our garden - are interested in birds because that's part of who they are, not just because they are hungry.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      Tame outside cats certainly still hunt, but it's really only a hobby. Feral cats hunt for survival. N=1 here, but in about 3 years of ownership my (formerly feral) cat has killed maybe 10 house/forest mice, 2 squirrels, and 1 small bird(he presents all his prey to me, and I keep a rough count to monitor his behaviour), and most of that was before he got a flap 2 years ago. Obviously a feral cat would need to kill a lot more than that just to survive. And he's a large Norwegian forest cat living on the edge of a forest. He could go on an absolute spree if he wanted to. I think he hunted considerably more before the flap because it was often hard to tell for me he wanted to come inside. So he'd get stuck outside for longer and get hungry/bored. If you want some hard data, this seems like a good starting point: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

greazy 3y ago

Unfortunately, no me neither. I think this issue extends beyond cats, it's the uncontrolled breeding of animals, which imo leads to all sorts of abuse. I find it amazing that anyone can decide I'm going to buy a breeding pair of cats with the end goal of making money. We need to phase out cats and dogs completely. This saddens me deeply because I love my dog but the damage these animals do to the environment is so large I don't think I can truly fathom. We can do this slowly, first pets needs to be desexed. For cats there's no exception. For dogs the exception would be breeding working dogs, or therapy/guide dogs. With cats they must be kept in doors at all times. These laws should extend to larger animals like horses. In Australia we have a huge problem with horses and camels. But the public do not support culls of horses, even if it's for their own benefit (eg to stop them from starving in winter). But the horse racing industry is huge here, they've got clout and political pressure. Uncontrolled breeding of animals for human enjoyment is amoral. Animal companionship is of course the exception but this comes with issues.

thousand_nights 3y ago
is this satire?
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Pretty sure it’s just bad logic informed by propaganda.
  - greazy 3y ago
    Excuse me what propaganda? This is informed opinion.
    - nuxi 3y ago
      If one was to replace "cats/dogs/animals/horses" in your statements with "humans", one could get another informed opinion. A bit cynical perhaps, but informed nonetheless.

watwut 3y ago

Cats roamed free for hundreds and hundreds years now. It is not like their presence was a new change.

carstenhag 3y ago
They used to only be outside, and were sometimes fed when they lived on a farm. Nowadays pretty much all roaming ones still get fed at home.
dano 3y ago
A primary difference is that cats were introduced into environments as a non-native species and have become the apex predator. This is especially true in New Zealand and Australia. Unlike native carnivorous mammals such as the Tasmanian Devil, Quall's, and Bandicoots, cats hunt for food and sport rather than act as scavengers. Cats in Tasmania have no natural predators other than humans. I've had many cats for pets and yet in an unbalanced environment short of predators, they really can cause tremendous damage. Short of an all out ban, keeping them indoors or in a catery or controlled in some manner seems reasonable.
- wtflick 3y ago
  This whole argument of 'non-native' irks me, with animals and plants. Most everything was non-native at some point. I mean of course it depends on (potentially huge) timelines but at some point in the past land bridges between continents didn't exist and then existed and then didn't exist. At some point some seed got lucky enough to be carried across a sea either by an animal or just wind. I know this is a naive point of view, but nature adapts pretty well to this, it's kinda _what it does_, even if in the short-term and from a human lens it causes damage. What does damage mean exactly.. a drop in population of some particular species or plant that we are used to having in an area. Are we sure that's damage and not just normal evolution of ecosystems? I certainly prefer that to happen than have local governments pass laws saying cats must be kept inside, lest they upset the environment that us humans are used to.
  - solardev 3y ago

williamcotton 3y ago

I think at least one small town in New Zealand has banned domestic cats specifically because of the impact on flightless birds.

dj_gitmo 3y ago
Cats also devour New Zealand’s indigenous ground bats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tailed_bat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_lesser_short-tai... > The bat roosts are very vulnerable, as they contain more potential prey within a single area. If these roosts were found by a predator, they could experience mass mortality events; in one incident, 102 lesser short-tailed bat deaths were caused by a single house cat in central North Island.

throwaway87651 3y ago

Canberra requires cats born from 1 July 2022 to be kept indoors. https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domestic-animals/cats/cat-containment https://www.cityservices.act.gov.au/pets-and-wildlife/domest...

throwaway290 3y ago

Many countries have been doing it for years. Seen a cat with a clipped ear? Those were caught and neutered to control cat population.