Armed with the recently published “killer cat study” from the Smithsonian Biological Conservation Institute and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, TNR opponents are calling for increasingly extreme measures.
Travis Longcore was among the first, telling KCET reporter Judy Muller that “managing and controlling unowned, free-roaming cats will require euthanasia. There are not enough shelter spaces, there [...]
Browsing the archives for the Travis Longcore tag
14 Mar 13
25 Feb 13
What do you get when public policy is based on agenda-driven junk science? If various TNR opponents have their way, we’ll find out the hard way.
As I pointed out shortly after the Smithsonian/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “killer cat study” was published, the paper actually has very little to do with science or conservation. At [...]
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Posted in In the News, Policy Issues
Tagged Alisa Mullins, Charlie Potter, Judy Muller, KCET, Mike Lynes, PETA, Peter Marra, Scott Loss, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, SoCal Connected, Stanley Temple, Stray Cat Alliance, Tom Will, Travis Longcore, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Tagged Alisa Mullins, Charlie Potter, Judy Muller, KCET, Mike Lynes, PETA, Peter Marra, Scott Loss, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, SoCal Connected, Stanley Temple, Stray Cat Alliance, Tom Will, Travis Longcore, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
23 Jan 12
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 [...]
30 Dec 11
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 [...]
8 Apr 11
“SF Weekly is San Francisco’s smartest publication. That’s because we take journalism seriously, but not so seriously that we let ourselves be guided by an agenda.”
At least that’s what the paper’s Website says.
Now, as somebody who reads SF Weekly only rarely, I want to be careful not to generalize. But if last week’s feature story [...]
1 Apr 11
Evidence of cats as pets? In Cyprus, 9,500 years ago (left) and, 3,500 years ago, in Peru (right).
As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, the history of the domestic cat is being rewritten—yet again. (Whether this piece gets the same attention as Elisabeth Rosenthal’s “Tweety Was Right” story remains to be seen—and I, for one, [...]
19 Mar 11
To hear The Wildlife Society’s staunch opponents of TNR tell it, the media’s just not interested in stories about “the impacts of free-ranging and feral cats on wildlife.”
“This January when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky in Arkansas, articles about mass extinctions and bird conservation were a dime-a-dozen. When the Deepwater Horizon oil [...]
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Posted in In the News, The Cat Debate, Threats to Wildlife
Tagged Christopher Lepczyk, David Jessup, Feral Cats and Their Management, Melissa Miller, Michael Hutchins, Nico Dauphiné, Pamela Jo Hatley, Robert J. Cooper, Steve Holmer, The Wildlife Professional, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Travis Longcore
Tagged Christopher Lepczyk, David Jessup, Feral Cats and Their Management, Melissa Miller, Michael Hutchins, Nico Dauphiné, Pamela Jo Hatley, Robert J. Cooper, Steve Holmer, The Wildlife Professional, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Travis Longcore
10 Feb 11
Using Google to translate the page’s contents, it seems this bird—despite “mock[ing] the cat and with loud cries of diving at him from the branches of acacia”—was yet another one that got away.
In the third edition of his massive book Ornithology—“the classic text for the undergraduate ornithology course,” according to the description on Amazon.com—Frank Gill [...]
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Posted in Cats and Birds, Threats to Wildlife
Tagged American Bird Conservancy, Carolina Raptor Center, Cat Crazed, Cats Indoors!, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, Frank B. Gill, Kays and DeWan, Nico Dauphiné, Philip J. Baker, Travis Longcore
Tagged American Bird Conservancy, Carolina Raptor Center, Cat Crazed, Cats Indoors!, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, Frank B. Gill, Kays and DeWan, Nico Dauphiné, Philip J. Baker, Travis Longcore
5 Jan 11
“Reassessment: A Closer Look at ‘Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return’” has been revised and expanded!
This paper, a brief review and critique of the essay “Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return” by Travis Longcore, Catherine Rich, and Lauren M. Sullivan, now includes sections [...]
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Posted in The Cat Debate, Vox Felina
Tagged Cole Carlson Hawkins, Coleman & Temple, compensatory predation, Conservation Biology, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, David A. Jessup, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Gary J. Patronek, Gary Meffe, Kays and DeWan, LASC BS115483, Merritt Clifton, Mike Fitzgerald, Nico Dauphiné, Stanley A. Temple, Toxoplasma gondii, Travis Longcore, Wisconsin Study
Tagged Cole Carlson Hawkins, Coleman & Temple, compensatory predation, Conservation Biology, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, David A. Jessup, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Gary J. Patronek, Gary Meffe, Kays and DeWan, LASC BS115483, Merritt Clifton, Mike Fitzgerald, Nico Dauphiné, Stanley A. Temple, Toxoplasma gondii, Travis Longcore, Wisconsin Study
10 Dec 10
The conversation continues on Audubon magazine’s blog, The Perch, with Travis Longcore doing everything he can to dodge the straightforward question I posed: If TNR and the feeding of feral cats are outlawed, then what will become of the many, many cats no longer receiving human assistance?
Among the topics he prefers to discuss are—and I [...]
8 Dec 10
Over the weekend, a comment (criticizing, once again, the recently released University of Nebraska-Lincoln “report”) I posted on Audubon magazine’s blog, The Perch, drew fire from Travis Longcore.
Longcore, of course, is the lead author of the widely circulated paper, “Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return” and Science Director for [...]
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Posted in Cats and Birds, In the News, The Cat Debate
Tagged Audubon Society, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, Feral Cats and Their Management, LASC BS115483, lethal control, Marion Island, Travis Longcore, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Urban Wildlands Group
Tagged Audubon Society, Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap-Neuter-Return, Feral Cats and Their Management, LASC BS115483, lethal control, Marion Island, Travis Longcore, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Urban Wildlands Group
8 Nov 10
Perhaps it’s an act of desperation, this “kitchen sink” approach favored by some free-roaming cat/TNR opponents. Throw everything—including the kitchen sink—into the anti-cat argument, and perhaps something will stick. Their impact on wildlife and the environment, for instance, or their threat to public safety—it seems there’s something for everybody. (Surely it’s only a matter of [...]
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Posted in Cats and Birds, Research Protocol, Threats to Wildlife
Tagged American Kestrels, Christopher Lepczyk, Darcee Guttilla, David Jessup, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, James Mosher, Jayna L. DeVore, Kerrie Anne T. Loyd, Nico Dauphiné, Northern Harriers, Paul Stapp, Prairie Voles, Red-tailed Hawks, Robert J. Cooper, Travis Longcore, William G. George
Tagged American Kestrels, Christopher Lepczyk, Darcee Guttilla, David Jessup, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, James Mosher, Jayna L. DeVore, Kerrie Anne T. Loyd, Nico Dauphiné, Northern Harriers, Paul Stapp, Prairie Voles, Red-tailed Hawks, Robert J. Cooper, Travis Longcore, William G. George
12 Oct 10
The timing was uncanny. Four days after my post “Inside Job,” Washington Post columnist Adrian Higgins reported incorrectly that two-thirds of pet cats are allowed outdoors. Higgins doesn’t mention where he got that figure, but considering the sources he used for the piece—including the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), The Wildlife Society, and Dauphiné and Cooper’s [...]
25 Aug 10
A pair of Eastern Bluebirds in Michigan, USA. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons and Sandysphotos2009
As I sift through my growing collection of studies, news stories, press releases, and anything else relevant to the free-roaming cats/TNR debate, it’s not unusual for me to be diverted by a seemingly minor item—a claim, interpretation, or reference that simply doesn’t [...]
30 Jul 10
Until now, my posts have focused almost exclusively on wildlife impacts (real and otherwise) related to predation by cats, a topic I’ll be returning to soon enough. Over the past week or so, however, I’ve been researching the Toxoplasma gondii parasite (another subject that will keep me busy well into the future). As it turns [...]
14 Jul 10
“The reason that we have a peer review process is to assess the quality and likely validity of scientific data and their interpretation… One goal of the peer review process is to assess an author’s command of the existing literature and whether or not it is being cited selectively to support the author’s views, without [...]
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Posted in In the News, Research Protocol
Tagged Conservation Biology, Michael Hutchins, peer-review process, Travis Longcore
Tagged Conservation Biology, Michael Hutchins, peer-review process, Travis Longcore
4 Jul 10
Although it’s taken me two months to respond, it took less than two weeks for Vox Felina to come under attack by feral cat/TNR opponent Michael Hutchins, CEO and Executive Director of The Wildlife Society. In his post, Hutchins accuses me of trying to “out-science the scientists,” and refers to my critique of the essay [...]
21 Jun 10
In April, Conservation Biology published a comment authored by Christopher A. Lepczyk, Nico Dauphiné, David M. Bird, Sheila Conant, Robert J. Cooper, David C. Duffy, Pamela Jo Hatley, Peter P. Marra, Elizabeth Stone, and Stanley A. Temple. In it, the authors [...]
11 Jun 10
In April, Conservation Biology published a comment authored by Christopher A. Lepczyk, Nico Dauphiné, David M. Bird, Sheila Conant, Robert J. Cooper, David C. Duffy, Pamela Jo Hatley, Peter P. Marra, Elizabeth Stone, and Stanley A. Temple. In it, the authors “applaud the recent essay by Longcore et al. (2009) in raising the awareness about [...]
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