2011 Trap Liner Award

Referring to a particularly poor piece of journalism, a friend of mine suggested—recalling the irreverent moniker her late husband had given their own local paper—the newspaper in which it had appeared was perhaps best used for lining birdcages.

Twenty months into this blog, I’ve encountered my share of yellow journalism infecting both small-town weeklies and, with surprisingly regularity, major dailies. Indeed, in one of my first posts, I referred to an L.A. Times piece in which Steve Holmer, senior policy advisor for the American Bird Conservancy, told the paper (one assumes, with a straight face) that there are 160 million feral cats in the U.S. (based, he claimed, on “the latest estimates,” which, as it turned out, originated with former Smithsonian researcher Nico Dauphine).

A year later, Toronto Star reporters Mary Ormsby and Jim Wilkes filed a truly pathetic story portraying—clearly, without the burden of fact-checking—“bird advocates… up against a multi-million-dollar cat-care industry.” And over the summer, The Columbus Dispatch joined the chorus of publications pedaling the infamous University of Nebraska-Lincoln paper (not fit even for birdcage duty, that one) as if it were valid research.

And then there was Peter Marra’s (pr)op(aganda)-ed in The Washington Post.

The list goes on and on. All of which got me thinking… Inspired by my friend’s “birdcage liner” story, and by Nathan Winograd’s Phyllis Wright Awards (“given to those who epitomize everything that is wrong with our broken animal ‘shelter’ system”), I bring you the Trap Liner Award.

Just as some papers are best for lining birdcages, others are well-suited for lining the humane traps used for TNR work. Some, of course, are better (meaning worse) than others. The Trap Liner Award recognizes the writer or publication that, over the course of a given year, best demonstrates a tragic failure of journalistic integrity while fueling—intentionally or not—the witch-hunt against feral cats.

Competition in 2011—the first year of the Trap Liner Award—was fierce.

“Live and Let Kill,” Matt Smith’s feature for SF Weekly, looked to be a shoo-in, due largely to Smith’s poor choice of sources—among them, ABC and Travis Longcore—and “evidence” pulled from Jonathan Franzen’s most recent novel and Peter Marra’s catbird research (the reports of which themselves border on fiction). This from a publication that claims to be “San Francisco’s smartest.”

Three months later, however, another San Francisco publication—Mother Jones—raised (meaning, lowered) the bar with Kiera Butler’s “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” As I mentioned in my July 1 post, the misinformation, misrepresentations, and missteps that make up the bulk of “Faster, Pussycat!” betray either willful ignorance or glaring bias. Or both.

(Of these, only Butler’s population estimate was later corrected in the online version of the story—where, at last check, there were 1,646 comments—and where, interestingly, the title was softened considerably to “Are Cats Bad for the Environment?”)

In the end, it was the combination of Butler’s sloppy journalism—combined with the magazine’s impressive circulation of 250,000 and the irony of all their chest-thumping about bullshit-busting and “smart, fearless journalism”—that clinched it for MoJo.

And so, the 2011 Trap Liner Award goes to Kiera Butler and Mother Jones.

•     •     •

In just a couple days, I’ll start compiling entries for 2012. Happy new year.

A Season for Reflection, Gratitude, and Generosity

Vox Felina Logo—Holiday Version

The holiday season offers us the opportunity (all too rare, it seems) for some much-needed reflection—to take stock of our lives and all that gives our lives meaning. It’s also a time to express our gratitude through generosity.

Among the organizations I’m supporting are FixNation and Save the Animals Foundation, each of which is making significant contributions at both the local and national scales.

FixNation
This is an organization of extraordinary people doing extraordinary work. Since opening its doors in July 2007, FixNation has sterilized and vaccinated more than 60,000 cats (not including the 16,000 or so brought in through their bimonthly Catnippers clinics). More than 85 percent of these cats are feral, stray, or abandoned, and receive services at no charge to their caretakers. (Owners of pet cats are charged a modest fee.)

And the quality of care these cats receive is truly remarkable (better than many pet cats receive, I’m sure).

But, as I mentioned in my post earlier this month, FixNation is facing a 20 percent budget shortfall as a result of a 2010 court injunction eliminating City of Los Angeles support for TNR programs. The stakes are incredibly high in L.A.—in terms of lives saved or lost, but also in terms of the city’s symbolic value as a community committed to trap-neuter-return, despite both the injunction and the faltering economy.

For the rest of the month, PetSmart Charities will match every “new donor” dollar up to $51,000. In addition, FixNation will receive 5 percent of December sales from Moderncat Studio, makers of beautifully designed toys, scratchers, and more.

Save the Animals Foundation
Regular readers will recall the South Jersey Feral Cat Relocation Project I wrote about in May. This is a collaborative effort headed by Save the Animals Foundation, Inc. and the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, both of which are working closely with a number of cat rescue and wildlife protection groups to relocating a colony of feral (or not—see below) cats from their current South Jersey location to nearby farms, horse stables, wineries, and the like. (Both STAF and APLNJ support TNR as the most effective means to reduce the feral cat population, and use relocation only in very rare circumstances.)

Thanks to your generous support (and a sizable gift from the good people at Alley Cat Rescue), we were able to raise more than $4,300 for the relocation and ongoing care of these cats.

South Jersey Feral Cats

Joan Bullock, a STAF board member, sent me an update recently. “To date we have cared for and relocated over 70 cats and kittens from the area,” reports Bullock. “We worked with other rescues, shelters, vets, clinics, other foundations, and many, many caring individuals.”

“Only about 35 cats were actually feral. The remainder were nursed back to health—socialized where necessary—and most have been adopted into loving homes.”

I’m told by somebody else closely involved with the project that, while the situation has been, at times, frustrating for nearly everybody involved, it’s also demonstrated the potential for various stakeholders to work together—a significant step forward, and one not to be taken for granted.

Still, there’s more work to do: sterilization, vaccination, and relocation of the few remaining cats, and ongoing care of several cats (some of which make up a relocated colony; others are being placed in a sanctuary). Tax-deductable donations can be made via FirstGiving.

•     •     •

If you’re able to make a tax-deductible donation to either FixNation or STAF, I encourage you to do so. If not, please pass the word along to other TNR/feral cat supporters.

Thank you, and happy holidays.

Nico Dauphine: A Different Kind of Community Service

The H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse, where the Superior Court of the District of Columbia is located. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and AgnosticPreachersKid.

More than seven months after she was charged with attempted animal cruelty—and six weeks after her eventual conviction—former Smithsonian researcher Nico Dauphine was sentenced today to a $100 fine and 120 hours of community service. (The maximum penalty for attempted animal cruelty, a misdemeanor in Washington, DC, is a $1,000 fine and 180 days in jail.)

The case began when one of Dauphine’s neighbors found rat poison in the cat food she puts out for the neighborhood cats. The Washington Humane Society was then called in to investigate. Surveillance video, combined with what Senior Judge Truman A. Morrison III described as Dauphine’s “inability and unwillingness to own up to her own professional writings” on the stand, proved sufficient for a guilty verdict—prompting Dauphine’s immediate resignation.

Court records indicate that Dauphine will be subject to 12 months of supervised probation (unsupervised if her community service is completed early).

Unlike Dauphine’s previous “community service”—her term for the roundup of cats in and around her Athens, GA, home—she is, while on probation, prohibited from “employment or community service with intentional or purposeful contact with cats.”

CNN reports that Superior Court Judge A. Truman Morrison III “said he had received a number of letters from people who know Dauphine.”

“He said such letters usually try to make a case that the verdict was in error, but in this case, the judge said, no one quarreled with the guilty verdict… Morrison said it was clear from letters written by Dauphine’s colleagues that ‘her career, if not over, it’s in grave jeopardy.’ The judge said that was already partial punishment for her actions.”

Dauphine, apparently, had little to say. According to the CNN story, “she said she was ‘very ashamed’ to have disappointed her supporters and knew that she faced an ‘enormous task ahead’ to regain their esteem. She declined to answer questions from reporters after her court hearing.”

Lisa LaFontaine, president and CEO of the Washington Humane Society, who attended today’s hearing, told reporters, “We are delighted that justice was served today.”

While I commend WHS for their tenacity throughout this investigation, I don’t see that justice was served in this case at all. Worse, Dauphine’s slap on the wrist sends a clear message to others who would take matters into their own hands, and to the general public: “that,” as Becky Robinson, co-founder and president of Alley Cat Allies, put it in a May 26 news release, “the lives of cats have no value.”

12 Sparrows Stressing

Song Sparrow, Whitby, Ontario. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons and Mdf.

New study attempts to demonstrate how the presence of predators alone can reduce songbird reproduction by bombarding birds with round-the-clock audio recordings of predator noises. One co-author of the study goes further, attempting to implicate cats.

The purpose of scientific inquiry (am I wrong about this?) is to reveal some truth about our world. Or the universe, in the case of astrophysics, say. Or, if we want to zoom out (and in, simultaneously) further still, the multiverse. Regardless of the particular phenomena under investigation, it’s essential that the methods employed replicate—to the extent possible—real-world conditions as closely as possible.

Easier said than done—especially when the work is set in the messy, often uncooperative, real world, where researchers struggle to balance the desire for laboratory-like control (necessary for valid analysis) with the vérité-like need for authenticity (necessary for valid conclusions). Or not, as a study published last week in Science demonstrates.

According to a story on the publication’s website, the research “shows that the mere sound of predators reduces both the number and survival rate of songbird offspring, regardless of the true threat.”

In fact, the songbirds in question were subject—Waco- or Guantánamo-style—to a round-the-clock barrage of menacing sounds over the entire four-month breeding season. Little wonder, then, their productivity was affected; what’s surprising is that these birds and their offspring survived at all (and didn’t decamp to quieter—even inviting (more on that shortly) terrain nearby).

What’s this got to do with cats? As Michael Clinchy, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the University of Victoria’s Department of Biology, and co-author of the study, explains in the ScienceNOW story, “our results show that the mere presence of this introduced predator is enough to negatively impact native wildlife.”

Perhaps Clinchy was expecting readers to overlook the bizarre methods he and his colleagues used. Or read their paper, “Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year” (PDF), in which there is no mention of cats at all.

But for those of us who are paying attention, it’s clear: Clinchy is simply in no position to comment on the possible impact of cats—or, for that matter, any predator that doesn’t routinely participate, together with a host of other predators, both avian and mammalian, in a maniacal chorus incessantly tormenting the song sparrows breeding on British Columbia’s Gulf Islands (culminating, by the way, in no physical attack—which, no doubt, only further unsettles and disorients the targeted birds).

The Study
Joining Clinchy in the research was frequent collaborator Liana Zanette, Associate Professor in the University of Western Ontario’s Department of Biology (lead author of the paper), along with Aija F. White and Marek C. Allen, both of UWO. The objective, they explain, “was to test whether perceived predation risk per se affected offspring production.” [1]

To do so, the researchers exposed song sparrows on five of BC’s Gulf Islands to “playlists” of various “calls and sounds” either of predators known to frequent the area, or of the area’s non-predators. Among the predators were the common raven, northwestern crow, Cooper’s hawk, brown-headed cowbird, raccoon, and three species of owls. (The closest we get to a cat is a “brush disturbance sound.”) Non-predators included the Canada goose, mallard duck, northern flicker, Rufous hummingbird, belted kingfisher, downy woodpecker, common loon, harbor seal, and two species of frog (along with “surf sound,” a benign match to the aforementioned brush disturbance sound).

“To compose our playlist of non-predator calls and sounds,” write Zanette et al., “we:

“(i) excluded any associated with either obvious competitors (other songbirds), or potential food sources (invertebrates, e.g. crickets chirping); (ii) included only calls and sounds known to be heard at our study locations; (iii) matched our diurnal predator list with a diurnal non-predator list, and our nocturnal predator list with a nocturnal non-predator list; and then (iv) matched each predator with a non-predator call or sound that had acoustic properties that were as similar as possible.” [1]

Twelve nesting females were exposed to the predator playlist; while 12 others, located nearby, were exposed to the non-predator playlist. “Playbacks were broadcast every few minutes, 24 hours per day on a 4-day-on-4-day-off cycle, throughout the 130-day breeding season.” [2] (Average daytime interval: 2 minutes 20 seconds of playback followed by 3 minutes 30 seconds of silence; average nighttime interval: 2 minutes 20 seconds/5 minutes 22 seconds. [1])

Nest predation was prevented by “protecting every nest in the experiment with both electric fencing and seine netting.” [2]

To evaluate the effect of the predator playback broadcasts, the researchers compared several metrics between the two groups of sparrows. Among them:

“the number of offspring produced per year… egg and brood mass, nestling susceptibility to thermoregulatory stress (skin temperature 10 min after mother flushed from nest), and four measures of behavior reflective of effects on habitat use: nest site selection, vigilance (flight initiation distance, i.e., distance of experimenter from nest when mother flushed from nest), nest attendance (incubation bout duration), and foraging (parental feeding visits per hour during brood-rearing).” [2]

(Note: A detailed description of the methods and analysis employed, as well as photos of the site and equipment used, can be found in the paper’s “Supporting Online Material” (PDF))

The data show that predator-playback females produced, on average, few eggs, nestlings, and fledglings than their non-predator-playback counterparts, for a 40 percent reduction in offspring overall. In addition:

“predator-playback females built their nests in denser, thornier vegetation, were more skittish… and spent shorter times on and longer times off the nest during incubation, and predator-playback parents made fewer feeding visits per hour during brood-rearing. Effects on all four behaviors were associated with effects on offspring number and condition.” [2]

The Researchers
Zanette and Clinchy have been studying the Gulf Island’s song sparrows for 12 years or more now, their work focused largely on the demographic impacts of predatory pressures and food supply (as well as the interaction of the two: “We conclude that annual reproductive success in song sparrows is a function of both food-restricted production and predator-induced loss and indirect food and predator effects on both clutch and brood loss.” [3]). Predation by cats plays only a minor role in their published work, yet both Zanette and Clinchy seem quite eager to talk up that role for more mainstream audiences.

In an interview on CBC’s The Current about her participation in the documentary Cat Crazed, for example, Zanette describes research in which she and Clinchy used video cameras to “capture predators in the act of preying upon songbird nests” in Rithet’s Bog, 10–15 miles south the Gulf Islands.

“What we’ve found over the years is that, of all predation events that we recorded, cats are responsible for 22 percent of those. OK, so that’s cats going in and taking songbird eggs, and chewing on songbird nestlings—completely wiping out the reproductive effort of those parent birds… They chomp, and sometimes they look at the camera and they lick their lips afterwards.”

Although Zanette does acknowledge some other culprits—rats and brown-headed cowbirds, mostly—it’s with far less enthusiasm. Granted, the interview wasn’t about rats or cowbirds, but the context doesn’t explain the outsized impact Zanette ascribes the bog’s cats.

Clinchy’s also interviewed for the film—which, I need to point out, I’ve yet to see, as it’s unavailable for online streaming outside of Canada (and, for reasons that will become clear momentarily, I refuse to purchase the DVD). However, in a story appearing in the online version of Vancouver’s Georgia Straight, which the publication describes as “Canada’s largest urban weekly,” Judith Webster (author of the highly recommended 2007 paper “Missing Cats, Stray Coyotes: One Citizen’s Perspective”) notes: “it’s clear Clinchy was directed by the Cat Crazed interviewer to focus on his lack of fondness for cats.”

And then there’s his comment last week about “this introduced predator.” All in all, it’s difficult to take these two seriously when they start talking about the impact of cats on the song sparrows they study.

(None of which explains, however, why I haven’t bought the Cat Crazed DVD. That’s because of my dislike for the film’s director, Maureen Palmer, who, in addition to the obvious bias she brought to Cat Crazed, apparently lied to the Toronto Star about the conditions of the cats treated by FixNation, a top-notch high-volume spay-neuter clinic north of Los Angeles. I’d hate to see even a dime of my money—10.2 cents Canadian—used to support her agenda.)

The Sparrows
“Our results suggest that the perception of predation risk is itself powerful enough to affect wildlife population dynamics,” write Zanette et al., “and should thus be given greater consideration in vertebrate conservation and management.” [2] Even setting aside for the moment the unrealistic methods employed, the fact that these sparrows produced 40 percent fewer offspring doesn’t necessarily demonstrate population-level impacts; a single breeding season’s observations are hardly sufficient to make such projections.

And, more to the point, the authors don’t actually mention anything about the population dynamics of song sparrows in the real world. The Song Sparrow is, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, a species of Least Concern. That said, Breeding Bird Survey data indicate a 0.6 percent annual decrease, on average, from 1966 through 2009. (Among the most credible BBS data, the steepest decline, 2.1 percent, was seen in Alberta, while the greatest annual increase, 5.0 percent, comes from Missouri.)

So, is the decline suggested by BBS data the result of song sparrows subject to the “calls and sounds” of cats (or any number of “brush disturbance sounds”)? I suspect it has much more to do with the calls and sounds of humans—whose numbers in the U.S. soared 55 percent, from 197 to 307 million, between 1966 and 2009.

In fact, the interaction of cats and song sparrows has been studied in some detail when Cole Hawkins conducted his PhD work during the mid-1990s in two Alameda County, CA, parks. As I’ve mentioned previously, Hawkins’ conclusions are largely indefensible, but I take him at his word when it comes to his bird counts. And song sparrows were among five (of nine total) ground-feeding species that demonstrated “no clear preference for the no-cat or cat area [where up to 26 cats were being fed regularly].” [4] (In fact, in nine of the 14 surveys conducted over the course of Hawkins’ research, the number of song sparrows seen in the cat area exceeded the number seen in the no-cat area—in some cases by a factor of two or three.)

Yet, for all Zanette and Clinchy’s apparent concern for cats predating song sparrows, they never once cite Hawkins’ work.

The Take-away
I’ve no doubt that this study was, as the researchers themselves describe it, “logistically very challenging.” [1] Managing the technology involved (which doesn’t always cooperate in the field) and the constant monitoring of nests and nestlings would, alone, keep a team of bright, ambitious researchers on their toes. But hard work, in and of itself, does not necessarily produce meaningful results.

As Julie Levy, Maddie’s Professor of Shelter Medicine in the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, mentioned in a comment on the ScienceNOW website, the study would have benefited from a “baseline control group” not subjected to the same “high degree of investigator interference.”

Levy goes on to speculate (admitting “it may be far-fetched”) that the non-predator-playback sparrows may have been “so relaxed and comfortable that their fledgling rate increased by 40 percent.”

Maybe it’s not so far-fetched.

Australian National University biologists Tonya Haff and Robert Magrath, whose work is cited by Zanette et al., argue that nestlings are “finely tuned to their acoustic world, and responded appropriately to sounds of danger nearby.” [5] So why couldn’t adult birds pick up on cues—broadcast continuously every 96 hours—suggesting that (1) there is no danger, and (2) food supplies are plentiful?

The predator-playback group, by contrast, would be picking up cues unlike anything they’d ever experienced: round-the-clock danger, in the air and on the ground.

One wonders, too, what impact a single-predator playback—say, Cooper’s hawks—might have had, used in intervals that mimic real-world conditions. Although Zanette et al. “have yet to observe them attacking a nest, they have been recorded doing so elsewhere and are known to represent a significant threat to adult sparrows.” [1] And, as Zanette and Clinchy point out in a previous paper, their research site has “the highest density of Cooper’s hawks in Canada.” [6]

In fact, Zanette et al. have already set the stage for such investigations—and funding: “it will be fruitful to evaluate the effects of cues from specific predators in future studies.” [1]

The Reaction
Not surprisingly, “Perceived Predation Risk” made UWO’s homepage, the proud university overstating the (already-overstated) implications of the work (even the authors must wince at the word prove): “New findings from Western prove fear of predation risk is powerful enough to affect wildlife populations even when predators are prevented from directly killing any prey.”

And it took The Wildlife Society’s Michael Hutchins less than 24 hours to endorse the paper, calling it “devastating to feral cat TNR advocates.” Misquoting Clinchy, Hutchins goes on to say the paper “is just another example of the growing peer-reviewed literature on this topic, which are providing strong evidence for the negative impact of feral cats on our native wildlife.” Demonstrating once again (as if we needed any more evidence) his commitment not to sound science, but to any headline that might drum up support for his witch-hunt (and year-end donations). (My comment, by the way, is awaiting approval.)

•     •     •

In the end, I’m left to wonder how studies such as this one—with its deeply flawed design—receive funding in the first place (in this case, by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Natural Sciences) and then warrant publication in Science (“the world’s leading outlet for scientific news, commentary, and cutting-edge research”).

Instead of increasing our understanding of the world, this research only adds to our misunderstanding.

I attempted to contact both Zanette and Clinchy by e-mail on Friday, but have yet to receive a reply (though there have been multiple visits to the Vox Felina site from in and around London, Ontario, where Zanette is based). Zanette never replied to my previous inquiry, either, related to her comments in the CBC interview.

Literature Cited
1. Zanette, L.Y., et al., “Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year (Supporting Online Material).” Science. 2011. 334(1398). http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/12/08/334.6061.1398.DC1/Zanette.SOM.pdf

2. Zanette, L.Y., et al., “Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year.” Science. 2011. 334(6061): p. 1398–1401. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1398.abstract

3. Zanette, L., Clinchy, M., and Smith, J.N.M., “Combined food and predator effects on songbird nest survival and annual reproductive success: results from a bi-factorial experiment.” Oecologia. 2006. 147: p. 632–640.

4. Hawkins, C.C., Impact of a subsidized exotic predator on native biota: Effect of house cats (Felis catus) on California birds and rodents. 1998, Texas A&M University.

5. Haff, T.M. and Magrath, R.D., “Vulnerable but not helpless: Nestlings are fine-tuned to cues of approaching danger.” Animal Behaviour. 2010. 79(2): p. 487–496. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347209005417

6. Zanette, L., et al., “Synergistic effects of food and predators on annual reproductive success in song sparrows.” Proceedings of The Royal Society B. 2003. 270: p. 799–803.

FixNation Video: Take 2

Apparently, the video I embedded in yesterday’s post did not come through in the e-mail version—something I realized only too late. My apologies!

The video can be found either on the Vox Felina site here, or on the FixNation site here.

Putting the “Nation” in FixNation

I’ve been a big fan of FixNation since contacting them, nearly a year ago, to clear up bogus allegations made in the Toronto Star by documentary filmmaker Maureen Palmer, who’d visited the clinic while filming Cat Crazed. The response I received was prompt and professional. And, it turns out, the beginning of an ongoing conversation.

Last month, while on a business trip to Los Angeles, I had the pleasure—finally—of seeing the FixNation operation for myself, beginning with their bimonthly Catnippers clinic, an all-volunteer community outreach/spay-neuter program now in its 12th year. A few days later, I toured the facility under “normal” conditions—meaning two veterinarians and seven staff sterilizing and vaccinating (and addressing a host of other health issues) 80­–90 cats each day (with an ease and efficiency that would put many manufacturing facilities to shame, to say nothing of our healthcare providers).

Since opening its doors in July 2007, FixNation has sterilized and vaccinated more than 60,000 cats (not including the 16,000 or so brought in through Catnippers), more than 85 percent of which were feral, stray, or abandoned—receiving services at no charge to their caretakers (owners of pet cats are charged a modest fee).

All of which would be impressive enough. But in L.A.—which has more or less become ground zero for the TNR debate since a January 2010 injunction put an end to City support of trap-neuter-return—what FixNation has accomplished is nothing short of heroic.

The Injunction
The original complaint—filed by the Urban Wildlands Group, Endangered Habitats League, Los Angeles Audubon Society, Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society, Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society, and the American Bird Conservancy—was brought under the California Environmental Quality Act, with the plaintiffs arguing, for instance, that TNR “can cause significant adverse environmental impacts by causing proliferation of rats and raccoons and creating water pollution problems.”

(As for how the restriction—or elimination, as ABC has proposed—of TNR would benefit the wildlife these groups claim to protect is anybody’s guess, and a topic for another post.)

Under the provisions of the injunction (in its revised version, filed with the court in March 2010), the City, its Board of Animal Services Commissioners, and its Department of Animal Services are prohibited from “promoting TNR for feral cats and encouraging or assisting third parties to carry out a TNR program.”

City agencies are no longer allowed to:

  • “Assist or provide incentives for, or otherwise facilitate the capture, sterilization and release of feral cat;
  • Provide discounts or discount vouchers for spay or neuter surgeries for feral cats…
  • Release feral cats from shelters to TNR groups or individuals [if the cats will be placed into a colony].
  • Develop or distribute literature on the TNR program or conduct pubic outreach on TNR using press releases, fliers, or other media except in conjunction with the proposed [California Environmental Quality Act] process…
  • Knowingly referring complaints about feral cats to TNR groups or individuals who engage in TNR.” [1]

Nevertheless, TNR continues in L.A.—with many supporters more determined than ever. And I understand the City of Los Angeles is working (albeit far too slowly) to get the injunction lifted. Still, the loss of City-funded vouchers—which provided a substantial portion of overall revenue for many TNR programs—is taking its toll. According to founders Mark Dodge and Karn Myers, FixNation lost about $300,000 in annual revenue, more than 20 percent of its yearly budget.

The fact that they’ve been able to continue their community outreach and provide no-/low-cost spay/neuter services for the past couple of years is, as I say, truly heroic. But now, as Myers explains in a video released late last week, FixNation needs our help.

Today, We Are All Angelenos
Charity, it’s often said, begins at home. And I do what I can to support local TNR and low-cost spay/neuter programs. But the stakes are extraordinarily high in L.A.—in terms of lives saved or lost, but also in terms of the city’s symbolic value as a community committed to trap-neuter-return despite both the injunction and the faltering economy. Which is why I also support the organizations doing the heavy lifting there—among them, FixNation.

If you’re able to make a (tax-deductible) donation, I encourage you to do so. If not, please pass the word along to other TNR supporters.

Need a little more incentive? For the rest of the month, PetSmart Charities will match every “new donor” dollar up to $51,000. You can even turn your holiday shopping into a contribution: FixNation will receive 5 percent of December sales from Moderncat Studio, makers of beautifully designed cat toys, scratchers, and more.

Thank you.

Literature Cited
1. Urban Wildlands Group et al. vs. City of Los Angeles et al. (Case No. BS 115483). Stipulated Order Modifying Injunction. March 10, 2010. Los Angeles Superior Court.