Collisions, Predation, and Bird Populations

28 Feb 2012

Masts of the Rugby Radio Station transmitter, Warwickshire, England. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Sreejithk2000.

Recent research suggests that collisions with buildings and communication towers have no significant effect on bird populations. These findings raise additional questions about the often-implied connection between predation by free-roaming cats and declining bird numbers.

According to the American Bird Conservancy, 300 million to 1 billion birds are killed each year in “collisions with glass on buildings, from skyscrapers to homes.” As many as 50 million more are killed annually by communication towers.

Yet, according to a study published last September in the open-access, online publication PLoS ONE, “this conspicuous source of mortality has had no discernible effect on long-term population dynamics among North American landbirds.” [1]

“At worst,” suggest authors Todd Arnold and Robert Zink, conservation biologists from the University of Minnesota, “collision mortality could be described as an added burden for populations already in decline for other reasons.” [1]

Which would seem to be, if not good news for the folks at ABC, then at least news. (Even solutions “that can greatly reduce avian collision mortality at manmade structures,” warn the researchers, “will not halt population declines among North American migratory birds.” [1])

So, why is there no mention of this study—published nearly six months ago—on the ABC website?

I suspect it will never appear there—or in any ABC publication. And they’re certainly not going to mention it to the media—too many awkward questions about contradictory assertions, resource allocation, and the like. After all, this is an organization that prides itself on using “the best available science” to shape policy.

(To be clear: Arnold and Zink are not opposed to “the deployment of simple design solutions that can greatly reduce avian collision mortality at manmade structures,” [1] despite the rather dire results of their analysis.)

The Study
To better understand potential population-level impacts, Arnold and Zink compared “long-term records of avian mortality from communication towers and urban buildings… with population estimates and trend data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey.” [1] The relative vulnerability of various species (188 in the case of communication towers, 147 for buildings) was quantified by comparing the proportion of birds killed in collisions with towers and/or buildings with their proportion in the overall bird population.

Species with very high collision mortalities relative to their abundance were dubbed “super colliders,” while species with very low instances of collisions relative to their numbers were dubbed “super avoiders.”

The spread between the two extremes is astonishing. Bay-breasted warblers, for example, were found to be 236 times more likely to collide with towers than would be predicted by chance alone (but are nevertheless considered a species of Least Concern). Horned larks, on the other hand, are 688 times more likely to avoid the same towers.

Fascinating work! What caught my eye, though, was the authors’ suggestion that their analysis technique would be appropriate for assessing “many poorly quantified conservation threats [including] house cat predation.” [1]

Future (Hypothetical) Study
Curious, I contacted Arnold, asking him how one would go about conducting such a study. Surely, obtaining an accurate count of mortalities due to predation is far more complicated than tallying mortalities due to man-made structures (itself, no trivial undertaking).

In fact, the greatest challenge, suggests Arnold, is not the data collection or subsequent analysis.

“In order to do the scientific study that you asked about, it’s necessary to approach it objectively, and I’d worry that anybody tackling this issue would be in one camp or the other, and the study really demands an impartial referee. A possibly better alternative would be to get members of both sides to agree in a mediated discussion what would constitute a valid study of the issue, and how such a study would be designed, implemented, and interpreted.”

Fair enough. Still, though: if implementation and interpretation pose particular challenges, the design of the study is actually fairly straightforward. “To apply the approach that we used for tower and building collisions,” Arnold says, “you would need to assemble a large data set on what species of birds are killed by cats.”

“It would probably take a large network of citizen scientists to accumulate a database on species composition of cat-killed wildlife; they would need to be people who had frequent and regular access to one or more cats—so, cat owners, cat monitors, and cat stewards who would agree to participate on a long-term basis. It would be important that sampling wasn’t driven by spectacular events (e.g., a cat owner ignores several non-descript House Sparrows that their cat brings home, and only submits information when a colorful Northern Cardinal gets killed). Conversely, you’d need to worry about people who might report only the boring and common things and fail to report when a rare or well-loved bird is killed because they are ashamed or fear backlash from the bird-loving public.”

Proper identification of each species would, of course, be critical. This, says Arnold, could be done using digital photos or by collecting remains (a method often employed in predation studies [2] and [3] and [4]).

“The study would have to continue until several thousand birds had been identified to species (Bob Zink and I worked with data sets that were a minimum of about 5,000 dead birds). From the mortality records, one would first identify the species that were most vulnerable to cats by comparing their proportion in the cat-kill data to their expected proportion based on population estimates. So, say for example, that juncos and American robins were 5.2 and 3.2 percent of the mortality records, but only 1.3 and 1.6 percent of the total bird population, then they’d be 4 and 2 times more vulnerable to cats than expected by chance. Other species would be less vulnerable than expected by chance. This part of the study would identify which species of birds were most vulnerable to predation by cats, and a priori I’d expect to see that ground-feeding birds like juncos and robins were more vulnerable, as well as urban- and suburban-adapted birds like robins, starlings, chickadees, etc.”

As Arnold and Zink point out in their paper, “total body counts reveal little about relative mortality risk for each species”—a fact often overlooked or ignored by those trying to link predation by cats to declining bird populations. And so, “the final—but critical—step” in our hypothetical study, says Arnold, “is to ask: Does this mortality factor matter do bird populations?”

“It obviously matters to the individuals that were killed, but given that 40–50 percent of the fall bird population is probably not going to be alive one year later, the focus here has to be on long-term population dynamics. And so, the final step would involve correlating the measure of vulnerability to cat predation from the first step with long-term population trends for these same species. If one finds that cat predation rates are not correlated with bird population trends, then it’s time to stop vilifying cats for bird declines (with the important caveat that it might still be important for one or two endangered/threatened species). If one finds that cat predation rates are negatively correlated with bird population declines, then it suggests that cats might be an important limiting factor of birds populations (with the important caveat that it might be due to some other unmeasured factor that is also correlated with cat predation).”

What We Already Know
Unfortunately, I’m in no position to undertake the study Arnold describes. And, in any case, am (unapologetically) in “one camp or the other.” (That said, I’d jump at the chance to be part of the aforementioned “mediated discussion.”)

On the other hand, there’s already plenty of research suggesting that predation does not necessarily result in population-level impacts. In The Domestic Cat: The Biology of Its Behaviour, for example, Mike Fitzgerald and Dennis Turner thoroughly reviewed 61 predation studies, concluding rather unambiguously: “We consider that we do not have enough information yet to attempt to estimate on average how many birds a cat kills each year. And there are few, if any studies apart from island ones that actually demonstrate that cats have reduced bird populations.” [5]

Also: it’s well-known that predators—cats included—tend to prey on the young, the old, the weak and unhealthy. Indeed, at least two research studies have investigated this phenomenon in great detail. In one, researchers comparing the fat reserves of birds killed by cats to those of birds killed through non-predatory events (e.g., collisions with windows or cars) found that “mean fat scores evident in the cat-killed birds… were sufficiently low that these individuals were likely to have had poor long-term survival prospects.” [6]

In another study, researchers found that songbirds killed by cats tend to have smaller spleens than those killed through non-predatory events, leading them to conclude that “avian prey often have a poor health status.” [7]

As the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds notes: “It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations.” [8]

(Frank Gill makes this very point in the third edition of Ornithology: “With some conspicuous exceptions… predators don’t limit or regulate the bird populations on which they prey. Instead, they take weak, sick, and young birds, many of which are part of the surplus that exceeds locally limiting food supplies.” [9] When it comes to cats, however, Gill considers “managed feral cat colonies [to be] potentially a serious threat to local bird populations.”)

• • •

Granted, the studies referenced above are no substitute for the one Arnold describes. And I don’t expect ABC to “stop vilifying cats for declining bird populations” anytime soon.

Nevertheless, Arnold and Zink’s findings ought to make it more difficult for ABC (or any other organization blaming cats for declining bird populations) to continue using cats as scapegoats. After all, even using the figures cited by ABC, it seems quite likely that collisions with buildings and communication towers are responsible for more bird deaths than are cats.* And the man-made structures are taking out healthy individuals.

Of course, as Arnold notes in his e-mail, bird species vulnerable to man-made structures may not be vulnerable to predation by cats, and those vulnerable to predation by cats may not be vulnerable to collisions. Still, taken together, all of this research begs the question: If building- and tower-collisions aren’t having population-level impacts, how likely is it that free-roaming cats are?

Which is exactly what I asked Darin Schroeder, ABC’s Vice President of Conservation Advocacy, and Steve Holmer, their Director of the Bird Conservation Alliance. That was three weeks ago.

*According to The American Bird Conservancy’s Guide to Bird Conservation, “532 million birds [are] killed annually by outdoor cats.” [10] Though far less than the “one billion birds” sometimes cited by TNR opponents, [11] ABC’s “estimate” is based on some dubious assumptions.

Thanks to my friends at Alley Cat Allies for bringing Arnold and Zink’s paper to my attention.

Literature Cited
1. Arnold, T.W. and Zink, R.M., “Collision Mortality Has No Discernible Effect on Population Trends of North American Birds.” PLoS ONE. 2011. 6(9): p. e24708. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024708

2. Churcher, P.B. and Lawton, J.H., “Predation by domestic cats in an English village.” Journal of Zoology. 1987. 212(3): p. 439-455. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1987.tb02915.x

3. Woods, M., McDonald, R.A., and Harris, S., “Predation of wildlife by domestic cats Felis catus in Great Britain.” Mammal Review. 2003. 33(2): p. 174-188. http://www.mammal.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=256:domestic-cat-predation-on-wildlife&catid=51:survey-reports&Itemid=289

4. Barratt, D.G., “Predation by House Cats, Felis catus (L.), in Canberra, Australia. I. Prey Composition and Preference.” Wildlife Research. 1997. 24(3): p. 263–277.

5. Fitzgerald, B.M. and Turner, D.C., Hunting Behaviour of domestic cats and their impact on prey populations, in The Domestic Cat: The biology of its behaviour, D.C. Turner and P.P.G. Bateson, Editors. 2000, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K.; New York. p. 151–175.

6. Baker, P.J., et al., “Cats about town: Is predation by free-ranging pet cats Felis catus likely to affect urban bird populations?“ Ibis. 2008. 150: p. 86–99. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/ibi/2008/00000150/A00101s1/art00008

7. Møller, A.P. and Erritzøe, J., “Predation against birds with low immunocompetence.” Oecologia. 2000. 122(4): p. 500–504. http://www.springerlink.com/content/ghnny9mcv016ljd8/

8. n.a. (2011) Are cats causing bird declines? http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx Accessed October 26, 2011.

9. Gill, F.B., Ornithology. 3rd ed. 2007, New York: W.H. Freeman. xxvi, 758 p.

10. Lebbin, D.J., Parr, M.J., and Fenwick, G.H., The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation. 2010, London: University of Chicago Press.

11. Dauphine, N. and Cooper, R.J., Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: A review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations, in Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics. 2009. p. 205–219. http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/pif/pubs/McAllenProc/articles/PIF09_Anthropogenic%20Impacts/Dauphine_1_PIF09.pdf

Portland Tribune Letter to the Editor

24 Feb 2012

My sincere thanks to the folks at the Portland Tribune for publishing my letter to the editor, written in response to their January 19 story, “Fowl play: birders clash over wild-cat spaying.”

Why doesn’t anybody pin down Steve Holmer or anybody else at the American Bird Conservancy when they make their indefensible claims? Hundreds of millions of birds each year? Where’s the science to support such an assertion?

Aggregate predation figures, such as those routinely used by the ABC (as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others), can typically be traced to small—often flawed—studies, the results of which are subsequently extrapolated from one habitat to another, conflating island populations (where the presence of cats can have dire consequences) and those on continents, combining common and rare bird species and so forth.

Something else to keep in mind: predators—cats included—tend to prey on the young, the old, the weak and unhealthy. As the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds notes: “It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations.”

All of which raises serious doubt about the implied connections—both direct and indirect—between predation and population impacts. Indeed, there is plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that such a connection is relatively rare and highly context-specific.

While I’m pleased to see [conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland] Bob Sallinger supporting trap-neuter-release, he makes essentially the same error when he says, “There’s no question that outdoor cats are harming the local wild bird population.” Rehab intakes provide, at best, a soda-straw view of the world. It’s a bit like making conclusions about a community’s human population based on one’s experience as an ER nurse.

What’s truly bizarre about ABC’s “mayors letter” is their suggestion that policies prohibiting trap-neuter-release and the feeding of outdoor cats would, as ABC’s media release puts it, “stop the spread of feral cats.” Again, where’s the science to support such a ridiculous claim? That’s easy: it doesn’t exist; indeed, the inevitable result of such policies is, contrary to ABC’s assertion, more cats.

For years now, ABC has been promoting erroneous and misleading information (e.g., baseless feral cat population numbers, exaggerated/erroneous predation rates, etc.) in their tireless effort to vilify free-roaming cats. No organization has been more effective at working the anti-trap-neuter-release pseudoscience into a message neatly packaged for the mainstream media, and eventual consumption by the general public. Their “mayors letter” is just their latest attempt to fuel the witch-hunt.

Something else not mentioned here—and something ABC’s certainly not going share with the mayors on their mailing list: we can’t kill our way out of the “feral cat problem.”

Mark Kumpf, former president of the National Animal Control Association, refers to the traditional trap-and-kill approach as “bailing the ocean with a thimble.” “There’s no department that I’m aware of that has enough money in their budget to simply practice the old capture-and-euthanize policy; nature just keeps having more kittens.”

I agree that the feral cat population is, as ABC’s Darin Schroeder puts it in his letter, a human-caused tragedy, but let’s be clear: ABC is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Their recent letter is merely a sign of desperation – the result of having neither public opinion nor science on their side.

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

14 Feb 2012

An article in The Atlantic describes fascinating research into the effects of Toxoplasma gondii infection, but what role do domestic cats really play?

Although we’re not even halfway through February, an article in the March issue of The Atlantic is already getting a lot of attention. But with a title like “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy,” that’s no surprise. (Don’t get me wrong: the article is a great read.)

What is surprising is that the story hasn’t been picked up by the American Bird Conservancy or, more likely, The Wildlife Society.

Not yet, anyhow. Surely, it’s only a matter of days before ABC, TWS, and others (mis)use the article to stir up their witch-hunt against free-roaming cats. A careful read, however, suggests such a move would be both premature and misguided (as if that makes any difference).

Excerpts
At the center of “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy” is the intriguing research* of Jaroslav Flegr, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague, who’s spent the past 20 years or so exploring the possible connections between infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite cats can pass in their feces, and human behavior.

“Healthy children and adults,” explains writer Kathleen McAuliffe, “usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.”

But if Flegr is right, the ‘latent’ parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia.

As I say, it’s just a matter of time—and not much of it, I suspect—before TNR opponents jump all over this, shaping it to fit their (tired) message.

I expect to see the lengthy quote from Joanne Webster, a parasitologist at Imperial College London, parsed very carefully, for example. Webster and her colleagues discovered that Toxo-infected rats are actually attracted to cat urine, a phenomenon they dubbed “fatal feline attraction.” Commenting on Flegr’s research, Webster is, in McAuliffe’s words, “more circumspect, if not downright troubled.”

I don’t want to cause any panic. In the vast majority of people, there will be no ill effects, and those who are affected will mostly demonstrate subtle shifts of behavior. But in a small number of cases, [Toxo infection] may be linked to schizophrenia and other disturbances associated with altered dopamine levels—for example, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and mood disorders. The rat may live two or three years, while humans can be infected for many decades, which is why we may be seeing these severe side effects in people. We should be cautious of dismissing such a prevalent parasite.

I imagine those first two sentences will be among the first to be dropped from any ABC or TWS reference to the article. As will this response from Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford:

…I’m not too worried, in that the effects on humans are not gigantic. If you want to reduce serious car accidents, and you had to choose between curing people of Toxo infections versus getting people not to drive drunk or while texting, go for the latter in terms of impact.

Infection in Humans
“Humans,” explains McAuliffe, “are exposed not only by coming into contact with litter boxes, but also, he found, by drinking water contaminated with cat feces, eating unwashed vegetables, or, especially in Europe, by consuming raw or undercooked meat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the infection rate in the U.S. among those 12 and older is estimated to be 22.5 percent.

And while Toxoplasmosis “can come from cats,” the CDC points out that “people are more likely to get it from eating raw meat or from gardening.”

Nowhere in McAuliffe’s article does she mention the proportion of people infected through contact with cat feces, as compared to those infected from eating raw or undercooked meat. For the purposes of Flegr’s work, the source is largely immaterial. (And, virtually impossible to know, I gather—which would explain why I’ve never seen so much a guess.)

Infection in Cats
In the infamous “University of Nebraska-Lincoln paper,” published in 2010, the authors report—correctly, according to their source—that “most feral cats (62 percent to 80 percent) tested positive for toxoplasmosis.” [1] Trouble is, testing positive—seroprevalence—is simply not a useful measure of their ability to infect other animals or people.

“Most cats only shed oocysts for about one week in their life” (Note: The Atlantic suggests a three-week duration, as noted below) and seroconvert afterward. [2] “Thus, it is a reasonable assumption that most seropositive cats have already shed oocysts.” [2] “Testing positive,” in this case, is nothing more than the detection of antibodies resulting from seroconversion. Furthermore, because “most seronegative cats shed millions of oocysts after exposure to T. gondii… seropositive cats are likely to be less of a public health risk than seronegative cats.” [3]

Environmental Contamination
Because Flegr’s work doesn’t involve environmental contamination, McAuliffe only touched on the subject (“the parasite is typically picked up from the soil by scavenging or grazing animals—notably rodents, pigs, and cattle…”). For many TNR opponents, however, this is a hot topic—as some have suggested a direct connection between the presence of domestic cats and toxo-related infections in other animals, primarily land and marine mammals. (See, for example, my post from May 17 of last year.)

As a recent paper reports, bluntly: “Cats are the definitive host: the disease only occurs when cats are present.” [4] In fact, this claim is contradicted by a number of studies:

High levels (75 percent) of congenital transmission of T. gondii, for example, in a “wild population of mice,” led UK researchers to conclude “that this phenomenon might be more widespread than previously thought.” [5] Infections in sheep also point to congenital transmission, which “may be more important than previously considered.” [6]
The “high incidence of T. gondii found, among others, in free-living ruminants suggests a possibility of other, so far unknown, paths of transmission of this protozoan.” [7] “Due to the fact that they are widespread, and tick-bites occur frequently both in humans and in animals, ticks might play an important role in toxoplasmosis transmission.” [7]
Of particular interest are studies in the Arctic, where the prevalence of T. gondii infection in arctic foxes, Svalbard reindeer, sibling voles, walruses, kittiwakes, barnacle geese, and glaucous gulls “indicates that infection by oocysts is not an important mode of transmission on Svalbard.” [8] “T. gondii most likely is brought to Svalbard by migratory birds that become infected in temperate agricultural areas in the winter. However, marine sources of infection may exist. The high seroprevalence of T. gondii in the arctic fox population on Svalbard may be due to: (1) infection from migratory bird species through predation; (2) vertical transmission; and (3) tissue cyst transmission within the Svalbard ecosystem through scavenging and cannibalism. Together, these transmission routes cause a surprisingly high seroprevalence of T. gondii in a top predator living in an ecosystem with very few cats.” [8] Researchers studying infection rates in polar bears concluded: “It would… be inconceivable to assume that the few cats would play a major role in the epidemiology of T. gondii in the vast high Arctic. This is apparently the case in East Greenland as well.” [9]

In the Spring 2011 issue of The Wildlife Professional’s special section, “The Impact of Free Ranging Cats,” the authors argue: “Based on proximity and sheer numbers, outdoor pet and feral domestic cats may be the most important source of T. gondii oocysts in near-shore marine waters. Mountain lions and bobcats rarely dwell near the ocean or in areas of high human population density, where sea otter infections are more common.” [10] What the fail to acknowledge is that the most common type of T. gondii found to be infecting sea otters is the Type X strain, [11] which has yet to be traced to domestic cats, [12] or that “dual infections of T. gondii and S. neurona were more frequently associated with mortality and protozoal encephalitis than single infections, indicating a role for polyparasitism in disease severity.” [13]

Now What?
So, what are we to make of all this?

Or, as McAuliffe poses the question: “Given all the nasty science swirling around this parasite, is it time for cat lovers to switch their allegiance to other animals?”

Even Flegr would advise against that. Indoor cats pose no threat, he says, because they don’t carry the parasite. As for outdoor cats, they shed the parasite for only three weeks of their life, typically when they’re young and have just begun hunting. During that brief period, Flegr simply recommends taking care to keep kitchen counters and tables wiped clean. (He practices what he preaches: he and his wife have two school-age children, and two outdoor cats that have free roam of their home.)

Certainly, there’s still plenty we don’t know about T. gondii. A May 2011 article in Scientific American, for example, concedes simply: “The exact link between T. gondii and psychiatric diseases is tantalizing but remains murky.” [14]

Most telling of all may be the reaction of the pharmaceutical industry. Or, lack of a reaction, to be more precise. “Until solid proof exists that Toxo is as dangerous as some scientists now fear,” observes McAuliffe, “pharmaceutical companies don’t have much incentive to develop anti-Toxo drugs.” And if Big Pharma doesn’t think there’s money to be made here, how worried should we really be?

• • •

If history is any indication, “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy” will be badly misrepresented by some TNR opponents, used to further vilify free-roaming cats as a public health threat. Not that they’ll offer anything in the way of a solution , of course—just more fear-mongering.

Now, if ABC, TWS, and all the rest are really concerned about toxo, why not propose a meat-free diet? OK, now that’s crazy.

*As opposed to, say, the unconvincing claims attempting to link T. gondii to brain cancer, published in a paper last summer. As expected, TWS took the bait.

Literature Cited
1. Hildreth, A.M., Vantassel, S.M., and Hygnstrom, S.E., Feral Cats and Their Management. 2010, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Lincoln, NE. elkhorn.unl.edu/epublic/live/ec1781/build/ec1781.pdf

2. Dubey, J.P. and Jones, J.L., “Toxoplasma gondii infection in humans and animals in the United States.” International Journal for Parasitology. 2008. 38(11): p. 1257–1278. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T7F-4S85DPK-1/2/2a1f9e590e7c7ec35d1072e06b2fa99d

3. Vollaire, M.R., Radecki, S.V., and Lappin, M.R., “Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in clinically ill cats in the United States.” American Journal of Veterinary Research. 2005. 66(5): p. 874–877. http://dx.doi.org/10.2460/ajvr.2005.66.874

4. Duffy, D.C. and Capece, P., “Biology and Impacts of Pacific Island Invasive Species 7. The Domestic Cat (Felis catus).” Pacific Science. 2011. 66(2 (Early View)): p. 000–000. http://pacificscience.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/pac-sci-early-view-66-2-6.pdf

5. Marshall, P.A., et al., “Detection of high levels of congenital transmission of Toxoplasma gondii in natural urban populations of Mus domesticus.” Parasitology. 2004. 128(01): p. 39–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031182003004189

6. Hide, G., et al., “Evidence for high levels of vertical transmission in Toxoplasma gondii.” Parasitology. 2009. 136(Special Issue 14): p. 1877-1885. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031182009990941

7. Sroka, J., Szymańska, J., and Wójcik-Fatla, A., “The occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in Ixodes ricinus ticks from eastern Poland with the use of PCR.” Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine. 2009. 16(2): p. 313–319.

8. Prestrud, K.W., et al., “Serosurvey for Toxoplasma gondii in arctic foxes and possible sources of infection in the high Arctic of Svalbard.” Veterinary Parasitology. 2007. 150(1–2): p. 6–12. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TD7-4PYR4P2-2/2/fcc91fcf1d1426cd1b750bd3840bdb31

9. Oksanen, A., et al., “Prevalence of Antibodies Against Toxoplasma gondii in Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) From Svalbard and East Greenland.” Journal of Parasitology. 2009. 95(1): p. 89–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1645/GE-1590.1

10. Jessup, D.A. and Miller, M.A., “The Trickle-Down Effect.” The Wildlife Professional. 2011. 5(1): p. 62–64.

11. Conrad, P.A., et al., “Transmission of Toxoplasma: Clues from the study of sea otters as sentinels of Toxoplasma gondii flow into the marine environment.” International Journal for Parasitology. 2005. 35(11-12): p. 1155-1168. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T7F-4GWC8KV-2/2/2845abdbb0fd82c37b952f18ce9d0a5f

12. Miller, M.A., et al., “Type X Toxoplasma gondii in a wild mussel and terrestrial carnivores from coastal California: New linkages between terrestrial mammals, runoff and toxoplasmosis of sea otters.” International Journal for Parasitology. 2008. 38(11): p. 1319-1328. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T7F-4RXJYTT-2/2/32d387fa3048882d7bd91083e7566117

13. Gibson, A.K., et al., “Polyparasitism Is Associated with Increased Disease Severity in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Marine Sentinel Species.” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 2011. 5(5): p. e1142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0001142

14. Koch, C., “Protozoa Could Be Controlling Your Brain.” Scientific American. 2011. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fatal-attraction

We Report, You Decide

12 Feb 2012

According to a story in last Saturday’s Akron Beacon Journal, the American Bird Conservancy “estimates there are 90 million wild cats nationwide, part of a free-roaming population that is killing more than a half billion birds annually.”

Beacon Journal readers unfamiliar with ABC’s free-roaming cats “message” probably assumed those “estimates” correspond to real numbers, give or take a few million. For the rest of us—those who know the organization’s line of misrepresentations, inaccuracies, and flat-out fabrications all too well—such “estimates” are taken about as seriously as the claims accompanying wee-hour infomercials.* Indeed, their greatest value, more often than not, is as fodder for another round of Feral Cat Witch-hunt Bingo.

And George Fenwick, ABC’s president, did not disappoint in this regard.

“Our read is really quite clear that free-roaming cats—that includes TNR cats—are proliferating. They are expanding horrifically and the data that we have, that’s been peer reviewed and published, makes it quite clear that there is no evidence that TNR works.”

In fact, what seems to be expanding horrifically is ABC’s witch-hunt—resulting in increasingly desperate, indefensible claims. All of which I pointed out—with quotes and citations from several peer-reviewed, published articles—to Beacon Journal reporter Kathy Antoniotti.

She was, I think it’s safe to say, unimpressed.

“It is my job to make sure that both sides are represented in any story I do,” she told me via e-mail, “and Mr. Fenwick has impressive credentials as a scientist.”

“I realize everyone thinks they are right on this issue. But as a reporter I have an obligation to present both sides of the argument, not to interrupt the information with my personal beliefs.”

Both Sides
Now, in Antoniotti’s defense, she did interview Julie Levy, Maddie’s Professor of Shelter Medicine in the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Alley Cat Allies president Becky Robinson, as well as individuals from nearby One of a Kind Pet Rescue and Dancing Paws Wellness Center for the piece. And, unlike so many reporters, she didn’t frame the debate as “the respected scientists” vs. “the crazy cat ladies.”

Antoniotti also refused to disclose the location of the three managed colonies she refers to in the story’s lede (a professional courtesy not to be taken for granted).

But, still: does her obligation really end with the representation of both sides?

In my reply to her e-mail, I asked Antoniotti if she’d be satisfied with presenting “both sides” of the climate change debate. What about intelligent design, or the MMR vaccine/autism “controversy”?

“I have great respect for journalists,” I continued, “but fully expect that their role is not to present both sides, but to get at, to whatever extent possible, the truth of a story (which means questioning even those with ‘impressive credentials’).”

Why didn’t Antoniotti at least ask Fenwick what ABC proposes instead of TNR—a perfectly reasonable follow-up? (Her failure to do so does not bode well for any subsequent follow-ups in response to ABC’s standard talking points about sanctuaries, the various risks to outdoor cats, and so forth.)

Or, how prohibiting TNR and the feeding of outdoor cats would, as ABC claims in its October 2011 letter to big-city mayors—to which Antoniotti refers in her story—“stop the epidemic spread of feral cats that threaten national bird populations as well as scores of other wildlife.”

Antoniotti was quick to respond, but never addressed these questions, suggesting simply, “we will have to agree to disagree.” She also explained that she’d “spent several days on this article and more than a month on research, when time allowed.”

Well, OK. I, more than most people, understand the enormous challenges of wading through the various claims, published studies, government reports, etc. in search of the truth (generally without the added pressure of deadlines or space constraints). A single report leads to half-a-dozen important articles, each of which leads to others—some of which are easily obtained, while others require connections to a network of libraries and subscription-only databases. Before you know it, you’ve forgotten what you were after in the first place.

On the other hand, some claims are remarkably easy to debunk—such as Antoniotti’s assertion, attributed to the Humane Society of the United States, that, “in seven years, one female cat and her offspring theoretically can produce 420,000 cats.” The Wall Street Journal’s “Numbers Guy,” Carl Bialik, untangled this one more than five years ago:

“Hundreds of media reports have repeated that startling stat… This is one feline number that has nine lives. Though no one I spoke to could say for sure where it comes from, and no one defended it, the myth of the precociously procreating cat has lived on as an advocacy tool for spaying cats for at least 18 years.”

See that? Dig into the claim a little bit, and it turns out there aren’t actually “two sides” after all.

Return to Akron
Meg Geldhof, a veterinarian with One of a Kind Pet Rescue, told Antoniotti that she doesn’t necessarily think TNR conflicts with ABC’s “goal… to reduce the number of feral cats.”

“If we do nothing, then we will continue to have an overpopulation of cats. This actually reduces them. And, isn’t that what they want?”

Good question. What exactly does ABC want? Absolutely no outdoor cats is the obvious the answer. And how do we get there? What’s to be done with the millions of stray, abandoned, and feral cats—90 million of them, if ABC is to be believed?

Here’s a hint: the answer is not sanctuaries. (Actually, I speculated about four possible scenarios in a post last month.)

So why is the press so reluctant to pin down ABC on this issue? For Antoniotti and the Beacon Journal, in particular, this was a missed opportunity. Since Akron approved its “cat ordinance” nearly 10 years ago, it’s become a hotspot in the TNR/free-roaming cat debate.

Ordinance 332-2002 made it illegal for cats to be “off the premises of the owner and not under restraint by leash, cord, wire, strap, chain, or similar device or fence or secure enclosure adequate to contain the animal.” In addition, it became the duty of Akron’s Animal Control Wardens to “apprehend” and “impound” any cats “running at large.”

All of which would, it seems, make the city a kind of poster-child for ABC and its Cats Indoors! program (not quite the ideal fully realized, obviously, but a significant step in what the organization views as the right direction). So, why isn’t Fenwick singing the praises of Akron’s forward-thinking policymakers, bragging about the area’s soaring population of birds now that cats are Public Enemy #1, and so forth? (ABC has, after all, been claiming Akron’s decision as a victory since at least 2004. [1])

Because there are no such success stories, would be my guess.

Now there’s something Beacon Journal readers ought to know about. And, how many cats have been rounded up and killed over the past 10 years as a result of the ordinance. Last year, one of Antoniotti’s colleagues at the paper reported on Summit County Animal Control’s 2010 adoption numbers (“More than 1,925 cats and dogs were adopted last year through the county—the largest number in at least the past seven years. Slightly more cats—986—were adopted than dogs.”), but the story never mentioned the number of pets that don’t make it out the front door. (When I asked Animal Control Manager Christine Fatheree about the agency’s intake, redemption, adoption, and “euthanasia” figures I was told: “These records were destroyed per our records retention schedule and no longer available.”)

Readers (and, since the Beacon Journal is now published online, this audience extends far beyond Summit County) might also like to know how the city’s policy has affected the population of free-roaming cats in the area—assuming, of course, it has. In short: what return have Akron taxpayers gotten for their investment?

Like all controversial stories, such ambitious journalistic undertakings would have (at least) two sides to tell. But the job doesn’t end there. Readers—many of whom are in-the-trenches stakeholders in the debate—expect and deserve better.

* I suspect that 90 million figure is derived, more as a matter of convenience than anything else, from a 2003 paper by Levy, Gale, and Gale, in which the authors write: “The number of unowned free-roaming cats in the United States is unknown, but is suspected to rival that of pet cats (73 million in 2000).” [2] These days, the number of pet cats is estimated to be 86.4 million, according to the 2011–2012 American Pet Products Association National Pet Owners Survey. Now, it’s quite a leap to suggest that for every additional pet cat acquired over the past 12 years in the U.S., there has been a one-cat increase in the free-roaming population—assuming two populations were more or less identical in 2000. Animal People’s Merritt Clifton estimated (also in 2003) that “the winter feral cat population may now be as low as 13 million and the summer peak is probably no more than 24 million.” [3] Later that same year, using roadkill data as a guide, Clifton suggested, “the U.S. feral cat population may have been reduced to as few as five million.” [4] “Since then,” Clifton tells me via e-mail, “the numbers suggest to me that the U.S. feral cat population has been flat, at about 6.5 million in winter, 13–16 million in summer.”

Literature Cited
1. Winter, L., “Trap-neuter-release programs: The reality and the impacts.” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2004. 225(9): p. 1369–1376. http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.2004.225.1369

http://www.avma.org/avmacollections/feral_cats/javma_225_9_1369.pdf

2. Levy, J.K., Gale, D.W., and Gale, L.A., “Evaluation of the effect of a long-term trap-neuter-return and adoption program on a free-roaming cat population.” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2003. 222(1): p. 42-46. http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.2003.222.42

3. Clifton, M. (2003) Where cats belong—and where they don’t. Animal People. http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/03/6/wherecatsBelong6.03.html.

4. Clifton, M. (2003) Roadkills of cats fall 90% in 10 years—are feral cats on their way out? Animal People. http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/03/11/roadkills1103.html

Game On!

30 Jan 2012

Be prepared for the next news story, media release, position statement, local ordinance, House or Senate bill, or government report that (intentionally or not) misrepresents free-roaming cats’ impact on wildlife and the environment, public health threat, etc. with Feral Cat Witch-hunt Bingo!

Downloadable PDF includes four bingo cards and 120 chips.

Impaired Vision

23 Jan 2012

Opponents of trap-neuter-return are long on rhetoric, but short on alternatives—at least ones they’ll discuss openly.

We just want the cats gone.

Yeah, well, I want a pony.

I don’t actually say that, of course. Not usually, anyhow—in part, because the two wishes are hardly comparable. If I really wanted a pony, I’d simply go buy one (a rescue, of course; or, as an alternative, contact the Bureau of Land Management, which began its most recent brutal roundup of wild horses and burros in Nevada last year). End of story.

“Removing” cats—a euphemistic reference to an often-fatal course of action—on the other hand, is not the end of the story at all (except, as I say, for the particular cats involved). Where there is adequate food and shelter—and island eradication efforts have demonstrated rather dramatically just how little human assistance the domestic cat requires in this regard—there will very likely be cats. If not today, then it’s very likely only a matter of time.

And still, the call for their “removal”—accompanied by this naive wish that such a move will be a one-time occurrence—is, it seems, continuous.

Last week, Loews Hotels in Orlando, FL, made headlines nationally when the self-described “pet-friendly hotel brand” reversed its position on TNR and on-site managed colonies. Among the news stories brought to my attention this week: the Waco, TX, Lions Club is demanding that Heart of Texas Feral Friends, whose volunteers have been sterilizing and caring for cats in a park owned by the Lions Club, discontinue feeding. According to KXXV News, the cat food “could attract bigger animals that could bite children playing at the park.”

In Harvey Cedars, NJ, 51-year-old Mark Rist has been, according to the Asbury Park Press, “charged with feeding feral cats,” the result of a two-month investigation. According to the paper, Rist was feeding 63 cats in one area—despite what Police Chief Thomas Preiser describes as the community’s “ongoing effort to control feral cats.’’ “It has cost the borough over $5,800 in fees to have cats trapped and taken to the animal hospital,” said Preiser. “This is on top of the over $3,000 the borough pays just for animal-control services.’’ (An online petition advocating that the charges be dropped has been started, and has more than 1,650 signatures already.)

And, less than 60 miles away, in Manalapan, NJ, health department officials have announced that they’ll begin trapping a managed colony of cats located at the Bridge Plaza office complex on February 1. As Michael Volovnik, president of the property association, explained to the Asbury Park Press, the cats are using a playground sandbox as a litter box, and could also cause a traffic accident in the complex parking lot. (I thought I’d heard all the “reasons” for killing outdoor cats, but this one’s new to me.)

Take away their food—or the cats themselves—and the problem’s solved, right? End of story.

Um, no. Not even if you click together the heels of your ruby slippers three times, repeating as you do: “We just want the cats gone.”

And yet, this is precisely what TNR opponents would have us believe. In fact, they often go much further. When, for example, the American Bird Conservancy sent a letter (PDF) to the mayors of the 50 largest U.S. cities last October, urging them “to oppose Trap-Neuter-Re-abandon (TNR) programs and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option,” their stated objective was to “stop the spread of feral cats.”

How’s that supposed to work, exactly?

Darin Schroeder, ABC’s Vice President for Conservation Advocacy, and author of the letter, hasn’t bothered—either in his original, well-publicized mass-mailing, or in response to my inquiries—to explain the mysterious cause-and-effect relationship underlying the claim. (Or, while we’re at it, ABC’s projections regarding the number of recipients who would surely be alienated by a letter that so grossly insults their intelligence.)

As I’ve pointed out previously, common sense—and science, which ABC claims to have firmly in its camp on this issue—tells us that such policies (assuming they could be enforced, of course) would only drive population numbers upward. (Indeed, there is plenty of evidence from island eradication efforts. On Marion Island, to take one of the more spectacular examples, the population of cats was estimated to be about 2,200 in 1975, just 26 years after they were introduced to the 115-square-mile, barren, uninhabited South Indian Ocean island. [1] If there were any efforts to sterilize these cats, I’ve not read about it. And the only “handouts” they received were “the carcasses of 12,000 day-old chickens” [1] injected with poison, as part of the 19-year eradication program.)

Now, if, as Schroeder claims, there are “well-documented impacts of cat predation on wildlife,” how could the inevitable increase in the free-roaming cat population possibly be a benefit? Or—again, if Schroeder is right about the impacts—be aligned with ABC’s vision of “an Americas-wide landscape where diverse interests collaborate to ensure that native bird species and their habitats are protected, where their protection is valued by society, and they are routinely considered in all land-use and policy decision-making”?

Such contradictions are, as anybody who’s been paying attention has surely noticed, hardly uncommon in ABC’s anti-cat messaging.

ABC didn’t do any better with their letter (this one, more of a low-key affair) to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, sent last summer. (DOI oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, has been an eager, taxpayer-funded participant in the witch-hunt against free-roaming cats.) In that letter, ABC, along with several signatories, aimed to “call [Salazar’s] attention to the threat being posed to wildlife by feral cats.” (Once again, ABC referred to “the well-documented impacts of cat predation on wildlife,” this time citing the work of, among others, former Smithsonian researcher Nico Dauphine, convicted in October of attempted animal cruelty for trying to poison neighborhood cats. It’s not entirely clear, but I have to think the letter was sent just prior to her arrest, after which ABC hasn’t, to my knowledge, expressed the slightest support for Dauphine.)

Signatories to the letter “urge[d] the development of a Department-wide policy opposing Trap-Neuter-Release and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option, coupled with a plan of action to address existing infestations affecting lands managed by the Department of the Interior.” (This would include much of the Florida Keys, of course. Regular readers will recall that ABC enthusiastically endorsed the deeply flawed Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Complex Integrated Predator Management Plan/Draft Environmental Assessment, issued a year ago.)

This “plan of action” is something I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to for some time now. And not just as it relates to “existing infestations” on DOI-controlled land; I’m interested in the big picture here. These folks are hell-bent on a future in which the feeding of outdoor cats is prohibited, one in which TNR is banned.

What I want to know is this: What happens if they get their way?

Alternatives to TNR?
One might expect that ABC, promoters for 15 years now of Cats Indoors!, would have an answer. Indeed, I brought up the subject during a December 2010 webinar celebrating the launch of their book The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation. “What we recommend,” offered Michael Parr, Vice President of ABC, “as an alternative to [TNR], is not abandoning cats in the first place.”

“Other options would be to house those cats in shelters, or outdoor sanctuaries which could be managed. Clearly, it’s a huge problem, and the solutions to this are going be things we going to have to work together on for a long period of time, but certainly that would be my first reaction to that question.”

After 14 years (at that time) of staunch opposition to TNR, this is the best ABC can do? Well, yes. (One wonders if ABC officials are truly so out-of-touch and/or flat-out delusional that they really think nobody’s noticed.)

The Wildlife Society
ABC is not alone, of course. The Wildlife Society, which signed onto the DOI letter, in its position statement (issued in August 2011) on Feral and Free-Ranging Domestic Cats (PDF), calls for “the humane elimination of feral cat populations,” as well as “the passage and enforcement of local and state ordinances prohibiting the feeding of feral cats.”

And in November, TWS sponsored the USFWS workshop, Influencing Local Scale Feral Cat Trap-Neuter-Release Decisions , at its annual conference. According to TWS, the “workshop [was] designed to train biologists and conservation activists to advocate for wildlife in the decision making process by providing the best available scientific evidence in an effective manner.” (Ah, yes: “best available scientific evidence.” It’s the same expression ABC and USFWS like to throw around. The critical term here is available. It seems all the science contradicting their steady stream of bogus claims is locked in the same filing cabinet, and the key’s been “lost.”)

But TWS hasn’t done any better than ABC when it comes to connecting the dots between our current situation and a future free of feral cats.

When, in his November 14 blog post, TWS Executive Director/CEO Michael Hutchins drifted off-message, conceding that “TNR alone is not the ultimate solution,” (emphasis mine) I used the opportunity to press him on the issue. Referring to the recently issued TWS position statement, I told Hutchins, “it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect a well-established and influential organization such as TWS to propose a plan to accompany such a vision.”

“On the contrary, it’s exactly what your membership should expect from their leadership—and what those of us who care for the cats you’re targeting demand.”

And Hutchins’ response? Cue the crickets (native species only, of course).

(Hutchins did, however, spend a good deal of time backpedaling: “I haven’t changed my position at all, and neither has The Wildlife Society, an organization now representing more than 10,600 wildlife professionals.” It now appears that the post itself has been modified to reflect his “corrected” position on the subject.)

Urban Wildlands Group
In January 2010, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge handed down an injunction prohibiting the City of Los Angeles from supporting TNR. 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.” [2]

According to the original petition—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 ABC—implementation of TNR in L.A. “can cause significant adverse environmental impacts by causing proliferation of rats and raccoons and creating water pollution problems.”

It’s important to recognize that the very premise of the petition—brought under the California Environmental Quality Act—is a red herring, nothing more than a roundabout way to go after TNR (in part, by restricting the funding to key organizations integral to L.A.’s various TNR programs). Setting that aside for the moment, though, the question remains: If TNR isn’t the answer, then how are we to reduce the population of stray, abandoned, and feral cats?

Travis Longcore ought to have an answer. Indeed, as head of the Urban Wildlands Group, current president of the Los Angeles Audubon Society, and author of the well-circulated “Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return” (a compilation of cherry-picked “facts,” misrepresentations, and glaring omissions, which I’ve critiqued in some detail), Longcore (who, I suspect, is the same “Travis” whose comment brought Hutchins back from the brink in November) would seem to be the go-to guy on this topic.

In fact, he doesn’t seem to have any plan, either.

In a December 2010 exchange on the Audubon magazine blog, The Perch (in which senior editor Alisa Opar blindly endorsed the infamous University of Nebraska-Lincoln paper as if it were actual research), Longcore twisted himself in a knot avoiding the question.

“You’ve been very straightforward about your desire to see TNR and the feeding of feral cats outlawed.” I wrote. “But then what?”

“I’ve yet to hear from you—or anybody on your side of the issue—spell it out. We all know the cats won’t disappear in the absence of TNR/feeding. We can argue about rates of population growth, carrying capacity, etc.—but let’s keep it simple here. Under your plan, there are these feral cats—an awful lot of them—that no longer have access to the assistance of humans (other than scavenging trash, say). OK, now what?”

Longcore’s response, in a nutshell, advocated for mandatory spay/neuter, and “cat licensing so that cats are no longer treated as second class, disposable pets.” (It’s difficult to see how their wide-scale killing will get them bumped up to first-class, but such illogical leaps have long been the norm among TNR opponents.)

Whatever his misgivings about disclosing a feasible alternative to TNR, Longcore was more than willing to diagnose the mental health of TNR supporters:

“TNR advocates… aren’t actually interested in reducing feral cat numbers. TNR is something that they ‘sell’ to their jurisdiction so that they are allowed to keep feeding ‘their’ cats. They appear to prefer that the problem persist so that they can validate their sense of self worth by being rescuers.”

There’s an irony to Longcore’s allegation, of course. If, as he implies, he and his fellow petitioners are “actually interested in reducing feral cat numbers,” then why not lay out the way forward?

“You failed to answer the question posed,” I pressed.

“Let me rephrase it, then: Throw in mandatory spay/neuter (if and only if adequate low/no-cost S/N is provided to the community—a rarity, as I’m sure you know), as you suggest. And let’s say there are—again, just to simplify matters—no roaming pet cats. The problem remains: many, many feral cats. And even if Animal Control had the resources to round up every one of them that triggers a complaint, it’s a drop in the bucket. And once you’ve outlawed TNR, there’s no way even one of these cats is going to be sterilized. So, the next step here is what, exactly?”

Longcore’s reply, not surprisingly, was a laundry list of “policies needed to control feral cats,” the majority of which—either directly or indirectly—simply lead to more killing: mandatory spay/neuter, pet limits, prohibitions on roaming, and prohibitions of “feral cat feeding unless on feeder’s property, or with permission of property owner and nearby owners/residents.” Oh, and “euthanasia” (not to be confused with euthanasia). Among the non-lethal solutions: “adoption or other nonlethal removal (e.g. the few sanctuary spaces),” and “outdoor enclosures for ferals where property owners are willing.”

“If you want to go out and sterilize and release feral cats in your back yard under this scenario, go ahead, but recognize that doesn’t then mean your neighbor can’t then trap and remove them. If you want feral cats to have a good life, adopt them and treat them like real pets. If you aren’t going to, then it is my strong belief the appropriate thing to do is to euthanize them.”

As for how this mass “euthanasia” would play out—you know: budget, time line, population projections, examples of successful models, etc.—Longcore had no more to say than did Schroeder or Hutchins.

Visions of the Future
Is it really so unreasonable to expect TNR opponents—especially those individuals and organizations pushing so hard for policy changes—to present a feasible alternative to TNR? Or even, as a start, to address directly comments made by Mark Kumpf, former president of the National Animal Control Association, who compares the traditional trap-and-kill approach to “bailing the ocean with a thimble”?

“There’s no department that I’m aware of that has enough money in their budget to simply practice the old capture-and-euthanize policy,” explains Kumpf in a 2008 interview with Animal Sheltering magazine. “Nature just keeps having more kittens.” [3]

Those budgets are very likely even tighter today. Now, take away TNR—along with all the “free” resources that come with it—and you’re wishing you had a thimble with which to bail the ocean.

As I explained to Hutchins, those of us advocating and caring for our communities’ stray, abandoned, and feral cats demand better answers than they’ve provided. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that supporters of various organizations opposing TNR are beginning to feel the same way. In part, because—and this, too, is becoming increasingly clear—a position opposed to TNR and the feeding of outdoor cats often, in fact, runs counter to an organization’s stated vision.

Either that, or their “concerns” about outdoor cats are really little more than fear-mongering (a tried-and-true fundraising technique, of course).

The way I see it, there are really only four possible scenarios in play here:

1. No TNR + No Feeding = Fewer Cats
As I’ve pointed out, this one simply doesn’t add up. And heaven knows, if there were evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of such policies, ABC, TWS, the Urban Wildlands Group, et al. wouldn’t be shy about it. That’s not to say they don’t try to suggest as much, of course.

In its TNR “fact sheet” (PDF), TWS, for example, holds up Akron’s 2002 ordinance—which requires the city’s animal control wardens to “apprehend” and “impound” any cats “running at large”—as both humane and cost-effective. Last summer, I took an in-depth look at the impact of Akron’s “cat ordinance,” and found that it’s been far more costly than TWS suggests. And if it’s done anything to reduce the population of the city’s stray, abandoned, and feral cats, nobody’s documented it. (Again, this would seem to be a “success story” in the making for TNR opponents.)

2. No TNR + No Feeding = More Cats—Oops!
What if all this rabid campaigning against outdoor cats has blinded participants to the inevitable consequences of their actions? You know, a careful-what-you-wish-for scenario.

Again, there’s no evidence to suggest that the “plan” will work. And yet, the drumbeat only grows louder. I tend to think that, generally speaking, the leadership at ABC, TWS, the Urban Wildlands Group, et al. is—despite various failures, of which I’ve been highly critical—smart enough to realize this simple fact. On the other hand, I have colleagues—people with far more experience and a much broader perspective—stop me cold when I say so.

3. No TNR + No Feeding = More Cats—But That’s OK
In the 22 months since launching this blog, I’ve been at pains to expose the flimsy nature of most complaints regarding the alleged impacts of free-roaming cats on wildlife and the environment. Much of that effort has involved the untangling of predation estimates based on indefensible sampling and extrapolation, and—more important—decoupling the implied relationship between predation and population-level impacts. Among the evidence I’ve presented (which would seem to be locked tightly inside the aforementioned filing cabinet, thus rendering it “unavailable” to TNR opponents):

Mike Fitzgerald and Dennis Turner’s thorough review of 61 predation studies, in which the authors conclude rather unambiguously: “We consider that we do not have enough information yet to attempt to estimate on average how many birds a cat kills each year. And there are few, if any studies apart from island ones that actually demonstrate that cats have reduced bird populations.” [4]

Also: two very detailed studies supporting a widely understood (though only rarely acknowledged among TNR opponents) pattern of predators: cats tend to prey on the young, the old, the weak and unhealthy. [5, 6] Or, as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds makes puts it: “It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations.” [7]

It may be that leaders of the TNR opposition do, in fact, recognize the implications of the well-documented science on the subject (though never publicly, of course), whether that concerns predation, rabies, toxoplasmosis, or any number of other aspects of the debate. Such an understanding would allow them to continue pushing for policies that would, despite their claims to the contrary, actually increase the number of free-roaming cats—but still have little or no significant consequences for the wildlife these organizations claim to protect.

Donors are happy, wildlife’s happy—what’s not to like, right? (Actually, all this unwarranted attention on cats is, I’m sure, diverting scarce resources from the real issues—so maybe the wildlife will, in the end, lose anyway.)

4. No TNR + No Feeding = More Cats. Exactly.
File this one under “A” for Apocalyptic. Or Armageddon, maybe.

What if more cats—lots of them—is not only OK, but the goal? At some point, their numbers become so great that popular opinion undergoes a tidal shift, favoring lethal control methods. The bigger the problem becomes, the more drastic the measures considered.

If some wildlife suffers for the cause, well, it’s a small price to pay. If you want to make an omelet, you have to be willing to break a few eggs, right? No free lunches here. Collateral damage. Etc.

Wild conspiracy-theory talk? Maybe so. I mean, it’s a bit like suggesting that our esteemed Smithsonian Institution hired a cat-killer to conduct research on pet cats. As I often tell my colleagues: you can’t make this stuff up. So.

• • •

TNR opponents have, for years, misled policymakers and the public—not only about the “threats” posed by free-roaming cats, but about their plan going forward (again, assuming they actually have a plan). They’re advocating for the extermination—in the tens of millions—of this country’s most popular companion animal, without ever proposing any feasible alternative to TNR. (Ironic, isn’t it? These same people claim to have the “best available science” on their side, but either cannot or will not describe or discuss what exactly they’ve got in mind for a solution to the “feral cat problem.”)

Once again, I’m reminded of that famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants, electric light the most efficient policeman.” Public scrutiny and a demand for transparency, Brandeis recognized, can bring about significant social change.

We need to start asking better questions—and demanding better answers—of TNR opponents. And we must do so repeatedly and publicly—in town halls, letters to the editor, and any number of online venues; and by contacting local, state, and federal representatives and government agencies.

No TNR? No feeding of outdoor cats? What’s your plan, then?

As the sunlight Brandies spoke of reveals the fatal flaws underlying the anti-TNR rhetoric, it helps light the way forward.

Literature Cited
1. Bester, M.N., et al., “A review of the successful eradication of feral cats from sub-Antarctic Marion Island, Southern Indian Ocean.” South African Journal of Wildlife Research. 2002. 32(1): p. 65–73.

http://www.ceru.up.ac.za/downloads/A_review_successful_eradication_feralcats.pdf

2. 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.

3. Hettinger, J., “Taking a Broader View of Cats in the Community.” Animal Sheltering. 2008. September/October. p. 8–9. http://www.animalsheltering.org/resource_library/magazine_articles/sep_oct_2008/taking_a_broader_view_of_cats.html

http://www.animalsheltering.org/resource_library/magazine_articles/sep_oct_2008/broader_view_of_cats.pdf

4. Fitzgerald, B.M. and Turner, D.C., Hunting Behaviour of domestic cats and their impact on prey populations, in The Domestic Cat: The biology of its behaviour, D.C. Turner and P.P.G. Bateson, Editors. 2000, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K.; New York. p. 151–175.

5. Baker, P.J., et al., “Cats about town: Is predation by free-ranging pet cats Felis catus likely to affect urban bird populations?“ Ibis. 2008. 150: p. 86–99. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/ibi/2008/00000150/A00101s1/art00008

6. Møller, A.P. and Erritzøe, J., “Predation against birds with low immunocompetence.” Oecologia. 2000. 122(4): p. 500–504. http://www.springerlink.com/content/ghnny9mcv016ljd8/

7. n.a. (2011) Are cats causing bird declines? http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx Accessed October 26, 2011.

Resort to Killing?

16 Jan 2012

Last week, the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel and Loews Royal Pacific Resort reversed its position on TNR and on-site managed colonies, citing what the Orlando Sentinel calls “liability reasons.” According to the paper, Orange County Animal Control considered Loews’ past efforts a “model program”—exactly what one would expect from a chain of “18 distinctive luxury hotels and resorts” that’s gone out of its way to appeal to vacationing pet owners through its Loews Loves Pets program. (The Loews website mentions only their Woofie Weekends offer, but a 2009 Examiner.com article refers to “gourmet room service options like roasted salmon and tuna delight for cats.”)

Not surprisingly, Loews’ decision sparked an uproar among TNR supporters, and, indeed, cat lovers in general. (The comments—overwhelmingly in support of TNR—continue to pile up on the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel & Loews Royal Pacific Resort Facebook page.) On Friday, Jennifer Hodges, Director of Public Relations for Loews Hotels at Universal Orlando, issued the following statement:

“The cat colony remains unharmed and on property. We are working to find a solution that keeps the health and safety of our guests a priority while taking the most humane approach possible. Loews Hotels welcomes any viable suggestions. If you’d like to make a recommendation or can provide a safe sanctuary for these feral cats, please contact: input@loewshotels.com.”

A sanctuary? We’re still entertaining that fantasy? Clearly, the folks at Loews aren’t as well-informed as one would expect, given their previous support for TNR.

Hodges never replied to my e-mail and telephone inquiries requesting details about the alleged heath and safety risks. What’s changed recently to warrant this about-face? I’d also like to what Loews plans to do going forward, though I think that’s pretty clear: “relocate” (trap-and-kill apparently doesn’t do well in focus groups of affluent travelers) any cats found on the properties.

Something else that’s pretty clear: all the unwanted attention is making a difference. Hodges’ statement on Friday was itself a reversal from Loews’ position just a few days earlier, as posted via Facebook:

“Loews Hotels is a pet-friendly hotel brand and we support the humane treatment of animals. It is important to share the facts surrounding this issue. Feral cats at our Orlando hotels are being humanely trapped and taken to a local shelter…”

And the story continues to get traction, picked up by animal advocates (including Best Friends Animal Society, The Conscious Cat, and Bunny’s Blog) and others (see, for example, Flyer Talk and DIS). There’s even an online petition (2,657 signatures so far).

All of which puts Loews in a very awkward position. How does this “pet-friendly hotel brand” defend a position aligned with the mass killing of this nation’s most popular companion animal?

So far, Loews doesn’t have much of an answer.

The Silent Treatment

9 Jan 2012

“I don’t want to be sort of a poodle dog when I’m out there, and a friendly sort of presence in people’s lives,” explained New York Times reporter David Carr in an October 2011 interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross, “and then come back and do something that’s really mean or aggressive.”

“And if it’s gonna be a hard story, one of things I always say is: This is gonna be a really serious story, and I’m asking very serious questions. And it behooves you to think it through and really work on answering, and defending yourself, because this is not a friendly story. And if they don’t engage, I just tell them: Well, you know what? You better put the nut-cup on, because this is not gonna be pleasant for anyone.”

Two months later, I heard the interview as part of a year-end compilation of the show’s most memorable conversations. Carr’s comments struck a chord; just three weeks earlier, following the publication of “Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year” in Science, I was unable to get co-authors Liana Zanette and Michael Clinchy to “engage.”

Which I found both frustrating and puzzling.

Clearly, these two are eager to talk about domestic cats (see, for example, Clinchy’s comments in ScienceNOW and Zanette’s in the Winnipeg Free Press), even when their work has nothing at all to do with them (or, given the absurd methods employed, real-world predation in general). And here I am—pretty much all cats, all the time—reaching out, only to be snubbed.

During his Fresh Air interview, Carr refers to his October 23 column (“basically a screed,” he says), in which he took on big media—in particular, The Tribune Company and Gannett.

“I spent four days [in June] trying to get comments on Gannett [executive] bonuses, and on Sunday night they said, ‘We’re not going to comment on these bonuses.’ And I just said: Really? You’re a newspaper company. You’re a publicly held company. These bonuses are a matter of public record, and you have nothing to say about them? And I just found that appalling, and I think some of that was reflected in the piece.”

“Clearly,” added Carr, explaining the crux of his frustration, “they were living a life beyond consequence.”

Again, I’m reminded of Zanette and Clinchy. These two led a study in which contrived methods rendered the work nearly worthless—and then went on to misrepresent the study’s implications to the media. And what consequences will they face? None, I suspect. After all, the research did receive funding, and the resulting paper was published in a prestigious journal.

All of which paves the way for more of the same.

Not that Zanette and Clinchy are exceptional in this regard. Since launching this blog in April 2010, I’ve had numerous e-mail inquiries go unanswered. Scientists, journalists, officials of various agencies and organizations, etc.—people eager to get their message out, clearly, but unwilling to respond when that message is challenged. I’d always thought such scrutiny not only came with the territory, but was also welcome—a necessary tool for shaping better science, reporting, and policy.

Others apparently disagree. Among those with whom I have a decidedly one-way correspondence:

Melissa Miller, Wildlife Pathologist, California Department of Fish and Game
Miller was one of 14 co-authors to link the Type X strain of T. gondii—responsible for nearly three-quarters of sea otter infections, according to one study [1]—to wild felids (e.g., mountain lions and bobcats) rather than domestic cats.

“Three of the Type X-infected carnivores were wild felids (two mountain lions and a bobcat), but no domestic cats were Type X-positive. Examination of larger samples of wild and domestic felids will help clarify these initial findings. If Type X strains are detected more commonly from wild felids in subsequent studies, this could suggest that these animals are more important land-based sources of T. gondii for marine wildlife than are domestic cats.” [2]

Now, one needs to be very careful about making conclusions based on such small sample sizes. Nevertheless, given (1) the unprecedented (as far as I can tell) nature of these findings, and (2) the nature of the current “cat debate”—in which free-roaming cats are being vilified in both the scientific literature and mainstream media—this would certainly seem to be newsworthy.

And yet, just two paragraphs later, the paper goes into detail about the estimated mass of “feline fecal deposition” created by domestic cats in the communities near Estero Bay. Suddenly, the focus is back on domestic cats.

I asked her about this in July of 2010, but received no response.

(Nine months later, in a special section of the Spring issue of The Wildlife Professional, Miller and David Jessup (another of the 14 co-authors on the 2008 paper, and a colleague of Miller’s at the California Department of Fish and Game) were at it again, arguing simply, “the science points to cats.” [3])

Christine Stracey, Assistant professor of biology at Westminster College
“I thought the cats probably really hammered them when they were fledglings,” said Stracey, a former University of Florida doctoral student in a UF press release about her study of Northern mockingbirds, “but when they were in the nests, I didn’t really expect the cats to be a huge problem. But I was really wrong about that.”

Once again, the underlying science fails to live up to the dramatic press release. Dig into the details of Stracey’s study, and it becomes clear that she’s probably overestimating the strength of cats as urban predators. Perhaps considerably. In fact, her nest camera placement almost certainly biased her data.

In short, it seems Stracey observed predation by cats largely because she placed the cameras where the cats were.

“We need to think hard about the feral cat problem,” warns Stracey in the press release. But if, as she suggests, cats are a “huge problem,” then how to explain the fact—as Stracey notes in the very same press release—Northern mockingbirds have proven “able to not only live with us, but do really well living with us” [and our cats]? These birds are, as she puts it, “urban winners.”

I asked Stracey about all of this by way of e-mail, but received no response. My follow-up e-mail also went unanswered, but I did notice some Website traffic from the Salt Lake City area (where Westminster College is located) that same day. Coincidence? Could be.

The same goes for the traffic from Columbus, OH, following my e-mail to Amanda Rodewald, professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University.

“There are a lot of loud voices that deny cats are important predators of birds in our cities,” argued Rodewald (whose relationship to Stracey’s work remains a mystery) in the UF press release. “But this study shows clearly that cats were the dominant predator in this Florida system—and that wasn’t presumed, it was recorded on video, so it was fact.”

When I wrote to Rodewald, I identified myself as one of those “loud voices,” explaining that I wasn’t asking her to speak for Stracey, nor to defend the research. But, given her own research interest—and her obvious concern with Stracey’s work—perhaps she might be able to answer one question for me: What impact might we expect on the area’s Northern mockingbird populations if the cats were removed from the environment?

It was, apparently, one question too many.

Michael E. Grigg, National Institutes of Health
Like Zanette and Clinchy, Grigg, who serves as Chief of the Molecular Parasitology Unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of NIH), used a PR opportunity to misrepresent his work. “The most remarkable finding of our study,” notes Grigg in an NIH press release, “was the exacerbating role that [Sarcocystis] neurona appears to play in causing more severe disease symptoms in those animals that are also infected with T. gondii.”

So, the story is more complicated than is typically acknowledged—T. gondii may not be the culprit it’s so often made out to be.

But Grigg is still hanging his hat—in spite of his own findings—on simple environmental contamination:

“Identifying the threads that connect these parasites from wild and domestic land animals to marine mammals helps us to see ways that those threads might be cut… by, for example, managing feral cat and opossum populations, reducing run-off from urban areas near the coast, monitoring water quality and controlling erosion to prevent parasites from entering the marine food chain.”

In fact, Grigg and his colleagues found that “T. gondii infections peaked in 2007 then declined relative to S. neurona.” [4] Could it be that free-roaming domestic cats—generally presumed to be the primary source of T. gondii contamination—are also on the decline? TNR opponents don’t seem to think so.

And the researchers observed that infection rates associated with inland waters were no greater than in mammals found along the outer coast. Again, this raises serious questions about the role of domestic cats (which, one would presume, are more numerous inland). As do the numerous studies pointing to sources other than environmental contamination [5–7]—vertical transmission, [5] for example, and possibly ticks [8]—none of which Grigg and his colleagues acknowledge.

Then, of course, there are Grigg’s proposed solutions—first and foremost: “managing feral cat and opossum populations.” Even setting aside for the moment the numerous hurdles (e.g., ethical, economic, etc.) involved with the mass removal/reduction/eradication of these animals, what impact could we realistically expect in terms of T. gondii and/or S. neurona infections in marine mammals? (And what other consequences would we then face?)

I assume Grigg has given the subject considerable thought, but—so far, anyhow—he’s been unwilling to share those thoughts with me.

Steve Klett, Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge Manager
I first ran across Klett’s name in the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Complex Integrated Predator Management Plan/Draft Environmental Assessment, where he was cited as the source for the claim that “cats accounted for 77 percent of the mortality during a recent re-introduction of the Key Largo woodrat.” [9] If, as USFWS has suggested, there are only about 500 woodrats in the wild, [10] why not disclose precisely how many were involved in this “recent re-introduction”? Seventy-seven percent out of how many?

Thirteen, as far as I’ve been able to determine. That’s how many were apparently released in November 2010—following the release of 14 others in February. And, according to attorney and Endangered Species Act blogger Keith Rizzardi, 13 more were released in April 2011.

I e-mailed Klett in July, asking him to clarify that 77 percent figure (which, let’s face it: does a far better job of fanning the flames of the witch-hunt for feral cats than, say, “10 out of 13” does), but never heard back.

Klett retired in December, but Chad Anderson, USFWS biologist at the refuge, assures me that I can “look forward to that [77 percent figure] going from a personal comm. quote to a referenced white paper in the final IPM plan.”

I’m not holding my breath.

Timothy O’Hara, Reporter for the Key West Citizen
In an August 30, 2011 story for the Key West Citizen, Timothy O’Hara writes: “Research indicates that cat predation accounts for 50 percent to 77 percent of the deaths of Lower Keys marsh rabbits and Key Largo woodrats.”

One-half to three-quarters? Really?

Actually, no.

That 77 percent, of course, comes from Klett’s “personal communication”—and seems to reflect the 10 mortalities described above. (Another question I asked Klett was how they could be sure that cats were the culprits. It’s been suggested by a volunteer involved with the re-introductions that the evidence comes from camera traps on the refuge, but I know of no such information coming from refuge officials.)

The 50 percent figure, I’m quite sure, can be traced to Elizabeth Forys’ PhD work, done in the early 1990s on Navy-owned land on Boca Chica and Saddlebush Key. Forys found that 13 of 24 marsh rabbits monitored over the course of her two-and-a-half year study were killed by cats. [11] (USFWS misrepresents this, too, in its Predator Management Plan, once again omitting the number of mortalities: “Free-roaming domestic cat predation accounted for 50 percent of adult Lower Keys marsh rabbit mortality during radio telemetry studies…” [9])

Turns out, O’Hara wasn’t interested in being fact-checked; he never replied to my e-mail.

(If O’Hara is interested in real journalism, he might consider an investigative piece about how USFWS routinely plays misleads the public to whom they are ostensibly accountable.)

Darin Schroeder, ABC’s Vice President for Conservation Advocacy
In October, Schroeder sent a letter (PDF) to the mayors of the 50 largest cities in the country, urging them “to oppose Trap-Neuter-Re-abandon (TNR) programs and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option.” In it, he trots out the usual laundry list of misleading complaints: predation, rabies, vague threats regarding the possible implications of the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, etc.

When I wrote to Schroeder, I made it clear that we need not get into all of this. I just wanted him to explain how feeding bans and policy directives opposing TNR would, as ABC suggests in its November 9 media release, “stop the spread of feral cats.” After all, common sense—and science—tells us that such policies (assuming they could be enforced, of course) would only drive population numbers upward. If, as Schroeder claims, there are “well-documented impacts of cat predation on wildlife,” how could an increase in the population of cats possibly be a benefit?

That was nearly two months ago now; I’m still waiting for Schroeder to connect the dots for me.

• • •

At the risk of stating the obvious, I’m not David Carr. And this is not the New York Times. I suppose my inquiries are easily ignored—coming, as they do, from an “outsider” whose blog has just 330-some subscribers. On the other hand—and not to put too fine a point on it—I’m asking the kinds of questions these people should be asked, by their colleagues, the press, and, in the case of the non-profits like the American Bird Conservancy, their donors.

That seems to be changing though—which means these folks had better get to work on better responses (or, as Carr suggests, put the nut-cup on). In the meantime, the fact that they refuse to engage speaks volumes.

Literature Cited
1. Conrad, P.A., et al., “Transmission of Toxoplasma: Clues from the study of sea otters as sentinels of Toxoplasma gondii flow into the marine environment.” International Journal for Parasitology. 2005. 35(11-12): p. 1155-1168. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T7F-4GWC8KV-2/2/2845abdbb0fd82c37b952f18ce9d0a5f

2. Miller, M.A., et al., “Type X Toxoplasma gondii in a wild mussel and terrestrial carnivores from coastal California: New linkages between terrestrial mammals, runoff and toxoplasmosis of sea otters.” International Journal for Parasitology. 2008. 38(11): p. 1319-1328. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6T7F-4RXJYTT-2/2/32d387fa3048882d7bd91083e7566117

3. Jessup, D.A. and Miller, M.A., “The Trickle-Down Effect.” The Wildlife Professional. 2011. 5(1): p. 62–64.

4. Gibson, A.K., et al., “Polyparasitism Is Associated with Increased Disease Severity in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Marine Sentinel Species.” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 2011. 5(5): p. e1142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0001142

5. Hide, G., et al., “Evidence for high levels of vertical transmission in Toxoplasma gondii.” Parasitology. 2009. 136(Special Issue 14): p. 1877-1885. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031182009990941

6. Prestrud, K.W., et al., “Serosurvey for Toxoplasma gondii in arctic foxes and possible sources of infection in the high Arctic of Svalbard.” Veterinary Parasitology. 2007. 150(1–2): p. 6–12. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TD7-4PYR4P2-2/2/fcc91fcf1d1426cd1b750bd3840bdb31

7. Oksanen, A., et al., “Prevalence of Antibodies Against Toxoplasma gondii in Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) From Svalbard and East Greenland.” Journal of Parasitology. 2009. 95(1): p. 89–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1645/GE-1590.1

8. Sroka, J., Szymańska, J., and Wójcik-Fatla, A., “The occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in Ixodes ricinus ticks from eastern Poland with the use of PCR.” Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine. 2009. 16(2): p. 313–319.

9. n.a., Draft Environmental Assessment: Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Complex Integrated Predator Management Plan. 2011, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Big Pine Key, FL. http://www.fws.gov/nationalkeydeer/predatormgmt.html

10. n.a., “Around the Refuge System: Florida and Arizona.” Refuge Update. 2010. 2. p. 17.

11. Forys, E.A. and Humphrey, S.R., “Use of Population Viability Analysis to Evaluate Management Options for the Endangered Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit.” The Journal of Wildlife Management. 1999. 63(1): p. 251–260. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3802507

2011 Trap Liner Award

30 Dec 2011

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

22 Dec 2011

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.

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

14 Dec 2011

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

12 Dec 2011

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

6 Dec 2011

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

5 Dec 2011

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.

In Search of Common Ground

24 Nov 2011

It’s always good to see the Humane Society of the United States supporting and promoting TNR. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago when HSUS was on the other side of the issue. In 1997, when the American Bird Conservancy launched its Cats Indoors! campaign, the organization was “singled out as its ‘principal partner in this endeavor.’” [1]

On Monday, President and CEO Wayne Pacelle, waded into the feral cat/wildlife debate on his blog (brought to my attention by a helpful reader), noting that HSUS “work[s] for the protection of both feral cats and wildlife.”

HSUS is, says Pacelle, “working to find innovative, effective, and lasting solutions to this conflict.” In Hawaii, for example (“an ideal environment for free-roaming cats and a global hotspot for threatened and endangered wildlife”) HSUS is “meeting with local humane societies, state and federal wildlife officials, non-governmental organizations, and university staff to find solutions to humanely manage outdoor cat populations and ensure the protection of Hawaii’s unique wildlife.” (HSUS may want to add Hawaii’s various Invasive Species Committees to that list. If recent efforts are any indication, they’re contributing to the environment impact.)

I can certainly understand HSUS’s current focus on Hawaii, and I look forward to seeing the results of their efforts. It’s not difficult to imagine such results being adopted more broadly. (Tackle the really tough job first, and the others will be easy by comparison, right?)

Still, it’s important to remember that TNR opponents aren’t limiting their attention to such hotspots.

Beyond Hawaii
The Wildlife Society, for example, in its position statement (issued in August) on Feral and Free-Ranging Domestic Cats (PDF), calls for “the humane elimination of feral cat populations,” as well as “the passage and enforcement of local and state ordinances prohibiting the feeding of feral cats.”

Earlier this month, TWS hosted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s workshop, Influencing Local Scale Feral Cat Trap-Neuter-Release Decisions, at its annual conference.

And in October, ABC sent a letter to mayors of the 50 largest cities in the country “urg[ing them] to oppose Trap-Neuter-Re-abandon (TNR) programs and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option.” (This, ABC claims, will “stop spread of feral cats.” I e-mailed Darin Schroeder, ABC’s Vice President for Conservation Advocacy, asking that he explain the biology and/or logic behind this miracle cure, but he never replied.)

Common Ground(?)
But we’re all after the same thing, right—no more “homeless” cats? The key difference being how we approach the problem?

I used to think so. Now, I’m not so sure.

TWS, ABC, and other TNR opponents are calling for the extermination—on the order of tens of millions—of this country’s most popular pet. Without, it must be recognized, a plan of any kind, or, given our decades of experience with lethal control methods, any hope of success. Nevertheless, they persist—grossly misrepresenting the impacts of cats on wildlife and public health in order to drum up support.

Common ground has proven remarkably elusive, and collaboration risky.

In the Spring issue of The Wildlife Professional (published by TWS) Nico Dauphine portrayed the New Jersey Audubon Society as sellouts for participating in the New Jersey Feral Cat & Wildlife Coalition (which included several supporters of TNR, including HSUS), a collaborative effort funded by the Regina R. Frankenberg and Geraldine R. Dodge foundations. [2, 3] The group’s commendable work, culminating in a pilot program based on their “ordinance and protocols for the management of feral cat colonies in wildlife-sensitive areas in Burlington County, New Jersey,” [4] (available here) has, from what I can tell, received little attention.

All of which suggests that we’re actually talking not only about very different means, but also very different ends.

• • •

How does one find common ground in the midst of a witch-hunt?

Earlier this month, Alley Cat Allies co-founder and president Becky Robinson proposed a crucial first step: “stop pitting species against species.”

“Today, I call on the leaders of the American Bird Conservancy, The Wildlife Society, and the leadership of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who persist in using flawed science and vicious rhetoric like Dauphine’s to blame cats for species decline, to stop.”

After which, there’s plenty of “real work” (some of which may, ironically, prove rather straightforward and uncontroversial) to be done, of course. Still, perhaps the situation in Hawaii is urgent enough, and the stakes high enough, to focus the mind—to get us that far.

Literature Cited
1. Berkeley, E.P., TNR Past present and future: A history of the trap-neuter-return movement. 2004, Bethesda, MD: Alley Cat Allies.

2. Dauphine, N., “Follow the Money: The Economics of TNR Advocacy.” The Wildlife Professional. 2011. 5(1): p. 54.

3. Stiles, E., NJAS Works with Coalition to Reduce Bird Mortality from Outdoor Cats. 2008, New Jersey Audubon Society. http://www.njaudubon.org/Portals/10/Conservation/PDF/ConsReportSpring08.pdf

4. n.a., Pilot Program: Ordinance & Protocols for the Management of Feral Cat Colonies in Wildlife-Sensitive Areas in Burlington County, New Jersey. 2007, New Jersey Feral Cat & Wildlife Coalition. p. 17. http://www.neighborhoodcats.org/uploads/File/Resources/Ordinances/NJ%20FeralCat&Wildlife%20Ordinance&Protocols_Pilot_7_07.doc

Run-on Sentence

21 Nov 2011

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

Having been found guilty of attempted animal cruelty on October 31st, Nico Dauphine was scheduled to be in court today for sentencing. According to court records, however, the hearing has been postponed until December 14th. Dauphine could be facing a $1,000 fine and 180 days in jail.

More interesting than the rescheduled sentencing hearing, though, are the changes to Dauphine’s legal team—Kerry Verdi and Billy Martin, both from Dorsey & Whitney LLP, are listed as “dismissed/withdrawn,” replaced by Molly Cannon, from O’Toole, Rothwell, Nassau & Steinbach—and her request for a new trial.

It’s difficult to see how a second trial could lead to a different outcome, especially if Dauphine once again takes the stand. It was, after all, as Senior Judge Truman A. Morrison III put it, “her inability and unwillingness to own up to her own professional writings as her own [that] undermined her credibility” the first time around.

Dear Mayor

11 Nov 2011

The American Bird Conservancy takes its plea for anti-TNR policies and feeding bans to the mayors of the country’s 50 largest cities. Just when cities are struggling to pay for essential services, animal control expenses would skyrocket.

Desperate times, it’s said, call for desperate measures.

Hence, the American Bird Conservancy’s latest stunt: calling “on the mayors of U.S. cities to stop the epidemic spread of feral cats that threaten national bird populations as well as scores of other wildlife.”

This, of course, follows ABC’s letter, sent over the summer, to Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “urg[ing] the development of a Department-wide policy opposing Trap-Neuter-Release and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option, coupled with a plan of action to address existing infestations affecting lands managed by the Department of the Interior.”

ABC is, it would seem, pulling out all the stops—which is what you do when you have neither public opinion nor the facts on your side.

Mayors Letter
The letter (PDF), signed by Darin Schroeder, ABC’s Vice President for Conservation Advocacy, and sent October 26 (just in time for some big-city mayors to be packing their things), begins this way:

“On behalf of American Bird Conservancy (ABC), I respectfully call your attention to the threat posed to birds and other wildlife in your city by feral and free-roaming cats. Given the well-documented impacts of cat predation on wildlife, ABC urges you to oppose Trap-Neuter-Re-abandon (TNR) programs and the outdoor feeding of cats as a feral cat management option.”

(The term Trap-Neuter-Re-abandon would seem to originate with a 2004 paper by David Jessup [1], just the latest example of ABC’s lack of originality (to say nothing of integrity). A month prior to sending out the “mayors letter,” ABC put out a media release lifted mostly from The Wildlife Society’s Rabies in Humans and Wildlife “fact sheet.”)

“Cat overpopulation,” Schroeder continues, “is a human-caused tragedy that affects the health and well-being of cats, our native wildlife and the public.”

“Numerous, published, scientific studies have shown that outdoor cats, even well-fed ones, kill hundreds of millions of wild birds and other animals each year in the U.S., including endangered species. Birds that nest or feed on the ground are especially vulnerable to cat attacks.”

Facts vs. “Facts”
Not surprisingly, Schroeder doesn’t go into detail about those “numerous, published, scientific studies” (caught up, as he is, in his disingenuous assertion that “TNR is not humane to the cats or the wildlife”).

Perhaps Schroeder’s expecting the letter’s recipients, their curiosity piqued, to go to ABC’s website for further information. In which case, they’re liable to find the recently updated version of Domestic Cat Predation on Birds and Other Wildlife (PDF), ABC’s idea of a fact sheet.

Unfortunately, the most substantial change to the 2011 incarnation of Domestic Cat Predation involves the typefaces used (a notable improvement—but, really, there was nowhere to go but up in this regard). Among the “classics” from the previous version are Cole Hawkins’ PhD dissertation, Carol Fiore’s master’s thesis , and, of course, the infamous Wisconsin Study—though the high “estimate” of “217 million birds a year” has been left out this time around. [2] (It’s a move straight out of Travis Longcore’s playbook: defend your reference to study that was never actually conducted by emphasizing its low “estimate.”)

And ABC is still claiming that 20–30 percent of the animals killed by cats are birds—this, based on “extensive studies of the feeding habits of free-roaming domestic cats have been conducted over the last 55 years in Europe, North America, Australia, Africa, and on many islands.” [2] This wasn’t true when ABC published its first “fact sheet” in 1997 as part of its Cats Indoors! campaign, and it wasn’t true when Ellen Perry Berkeley untangled the underlying science in her 2004 book, TNR Past Present and Future: A history of the trap-neuter-return movement. [3]

And guess what? It’s no closer to the truth today.

New to the 2011 version are references to the second edition of Frank Gill’s Ornithology (“cats kill between 500 million and one billion birds” [2]), in which Gill blindly endorses Rich Stallcup’s absurd, back-of-the-envelope predation “estimate,” and to the equally absurd $17 billion “annual economic loss from feral cat predation on birds in the United States.” [2]

And, not to be outdone, ABC refers to their own book, released last year, claiming: “After loss of wildlife habitat and fragmentation due to human development, scientists now list invasive species, including cats, as the second most serious threat to bird populations worldwide.” [2] (This reference to scientists is seriously undermined by ABC’s failure to cite sources in The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation.)

ESA/MBTA
ABC is nothing if not predictable, so it’s no surprise to see them once again playing the ESA/MBTA card.

“Federal, state, and local governments,” writes Schroeder, “have responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to conserve birds, and must also carry out their paramount mandate of protecting public’s health. Failing to do so can result in legal penalties and civil liability.”

Again, no specifics. Why? To my knowledge (and I’ve asked many others who’ve been at this far longer than I have) there has been no such legal action; it’s just another of ABC’s scare tactics.

Policy Plea
Schroeder wraps up his plea by urging mayors “to issue a policy directive opposing TNR and halt city funding if any is currently being expended”—suggesting, I suppose, that the traditional trap-and-kill approach is cost-effective.

And the evidence of that? Like their scientific and legal claims, ABC can’t be bothered with the details. (Of course, Schroeder does invite inquiries: “If you have any questions please feel free to call Anne Law at 202/234-7181, or email alaw@abcbirds.org.”)

Now, Schroeder doesn’t say so, but what ABC is actually calling for is the killing—on an unprecedented scale—of this country’s most popular pet (the inevitable consequence of policies prohibiting TNR and outdoor feeding). And we know a thing or two about what’s involved with “successful” eradication efforts.

On Marion Island, for example, it took 19 years to exterminate approximately 2,200 cats—using feline distemper, poisoning, hunting and trapping, and dogs. [4] Just 115 square miles in total area, this barren, uninhabited South Indian Ocean island is the largest from which cats have been eradicated.

I’ve been unable to find cost figures for the project, but if the Ascension Island effort is any indication, it must have been astronomical. On Ascension, roughly one-third the size of Marion, it cost the equivalent of $1.1 million to eradicate approximately 635 cats over 27 months. [5] (Nearly 40 percent of the island’s pet cats were accidentally killed in the process, which, as one report noted, “caused public consternation.”)

Is it any wonder ABC ignores island eradications—arguably the greatest “successes” for lethal control methods—in their talking points? Even if policy makers (and the public, to whom they are accountable) were willing to fund such unspeakable horrors with our tax dollars, there’s no evidence to suggest that such measures can be scaled up for use across the country.

• • •

I agree that “cat overpopulation is a human-caused tragedy,” but see nothing in Schroeder’s letter to suggest that ABC is part of the solution.

On the contrary, the record is quite clear: for years now, ABC has been promoting erroneous and misleading information in their tireless effort to vilify free-roaming cats. Indeed, no organization has been more effective at working the anti-TNR pseudoscience into a message neatly packaged for the mainstream media, and eventual consumption by the general public.

This seems to be changing, though, as people begin to see through ABC’s bogus claims—and, just as important, their lack of an alternative to TNR. Like their colleagues at The Wildlife Society, ABC needs to focus less on getting their message out and more on the message itself.

Literature Cited
1. Jessup, D.A., “The welfare of feral cats and wildlife.” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 2004. 225(9): p. 1377-1383. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15552312

http://www.avma.org/avmacollections/feral_cats/javma_225_9_1377.pdf

2. ABC, Domestic Cat Predation on Birds and Other Wildlife. 2011, American Bird Conservancy: The Plains, VA. http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/materials/CatPredation2011.pdf

3. Berkeley, E.P., TNR Past present and future: A history of the trap-neuter-return movement. 2004, Bethesda, MD: Alley Cat Allies.

4. Bester, M.N., et al., “A review of the successful eradication of feral cats from sub-Antarctic Marion Island, Southern Indian Ocean.” South African Journal of Wildlife Research. 2002. 32(1): p. 65–73.

http://www.ceru.up.ac.za/downloads/A_review_successful_eradication_feralcats.pdf

5. Ratcliffe, N., et al., “The eradication of feral cats from Ascension Island and its subsequent recolonization by seabirds.” Oryx. 2010. 44(01): p. 20–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S003060530999069X

Animal Wise Radio: Guilty Verdict in Nico Dauphine Trial

7 Nov 2011

On yesterday’s Animal Wise Radio show, hosts Mike Fry and Beth Nelson and I discussed the guilty verdict handed down last week in Nico Dauphine’s attempted animal cruelty case , as well as the implications for future cat-related research at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and elsewhere.

If you missed it, you can check the complete show in podcast format. An MP3 file (6.4 MB) of our conversation (approximately 13 minutes) is available here.

Nico Dauphine Resigns

2 Nov 2011

According to the National Zoo’s Twitter feed and a comment posted on its Facebook page, “[Monday] the Smithsonian accepted Dr. Dauphine’s resignation; it was effective immediately.” I haven’t seen a statement anything more official looking from the National Zoo or the Migratory Bird Center.

Indeed, official statements seem to be remarkably scarce following Monday’s verdict. Where are all of Dauphine’s supporters? You know, the individuals and organizations that were so quick to cite her sloppy work when it suited their purpose (i.e., the witch-hunt against free-roaming cats), but that have remained—at least publicly—silent over the past few months.

Speaking of which… The Wildlife Society put out a peculiar statement today via its Making Tracks blog in which they seem to imply that the cats Dauphine attempted to poison had it coming to them because they “congregated near her building.” According to the statement, TWS “does not condone animal cruelty or illegal behavior of any kind”—but that’s hardly the same thing as condemning what was done in this case.

But that’s not all that’s missing. One expects more than “TWS cannot comment on this case” from a blog post called The Wildlife Society Responds to Dr. Dauphine Case on Attempted Animal Cruelty.

Of course, TWS was more than willing to offer Dauphine a platform earlier this year, when it published “Pick One: Outdoor Cats or Conservation” and “Follow the Money: The Economics of TNR Advocacy”—both of which demonstrated her willingness to put the witch-hunt ahead of the science (or even the basic information contained in an organization’s financial statements)—in a special section of The Wildlife Professional called “The Impact of Free Ranging Cats.”

So what’s changed?

On the other hand, what is there to say, really? The message is coming through loud and clear: Dauphine’s professional work on the subject of free-roaming cats—cited and promoted with great enthusiasm before all this nasty press attention—is as indefensible as the actions that landed her in DC Superior Court.

Nico Dauphine Found Guilty of Attempted Animal Cruelty

31 Oct 2011

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

After more than five months of delays, Nico Dauphine was, this afternoon in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, found guilty of attempted animal cruelty. (Sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 21st.)

Apparently, even “super lawyer” Billy Martin—brought in at the last minute—couldn’t save Dauphine. While the security camera footage (at least the portions released to the public via Fox 5 News) didn’t prove to be the smoking gun many expected, it was, it seems, sufficiently damning.

That, and Dauphine’s own testimony—which, I’m told, the judge simply didn’t buy. (Perhaps she was no more convincing in court—as, I’m told, she tried repeatedly to distance herself from her own very public statements opposing TNR—than she was during her infamous “Apocalypse Meow” presentation.)

According to a story in the Washington Post (published shortly after I had this post online), “Senior Judge Truman A. Morrison III said it was the video, along with Dauphine’s testimony, that led him to believe she had ‘motive and opportunity.’”

He specifically pointed to her repeated denials of her writings. “Her inability and unwillingness to own up to her own professional writings as her own undermined her credibility,” Morrison said.

Back in the News
While I’m pleased with the verdict, I think the fact that she’s been found guilty is actually less important than the fact that she didn’t get off the hook, if that makes any sense. This was a story that barely made the news when it first broke, and has been all but forgotten in the intervening months. A guilty verdict—regardless of the particulars—will, I hope, get the media interested again.

And, with any luck, asking some hard questions for a change.

Starting with: How in the hell was Nico Dauphine hired by the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center in the first place? They had to know her reputation for both misreading and misrepresenting the science in her efforts to vilify free-roaming cats. Yet, her supervisors—including Peter Marra, of course—had Dauphine studying the hunting habits of pet cats.

As I understand it, hers is a highly competitive fellowship—surely there were other candidates who would have been a better fit. (Or maybe not—again, her reputation preceded her. If Dauphine was in fact the best fit, though, what does that say about the Migratory Bird Center and the National Zoo?)

Reactions
It’s going to be interesting to see how others react to today’s verdict.

Last I checked, The Wildlife Society’s Michael Hutchins hasn’t even mentioned Dauphine’s arrest on his blog—this, despite her extensive contribution to The Wildlife Professional (published by TWS) this past spring, when the magazine was devoted to “The Impact of Free Ranging Cats.” Nor have I seen ABC make any kind of statement. Will they remove Dauphine’s Impacts of Free-ranging Domestic Cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States from the ABC website now that she’s been convicted, or does ABC still stand by her so-called research?

More interesting will be the reaction from those whose cats were lost—or nearly lost—as a result of Dauphine’s “community service” during her days in Athens. I don’t know that today’s decision will feel much like justice for them, though perhaps it’s a start.