Cats – an easy target for lazy environmentalists

Since hubby and I are having a ‘dry’ June and going to the pub for lunch was out, we spent Saturday walking through the city. Along with bags of junk (the sales are on) and some retro fabric, a secondhand copy of Tim Low’s 2001 book ‘Feral Future’ jumped off the shelf and into my possession.

Now, I wanted to learn more about feral animals but I fully expected Feral Future to be frustrating anti-cat reading. But au contraire! It’s an absolute cracker, taking what could be a pretty dry topic and turning it into ‘the astounding history of Australia’ worthy of any Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

The book starts with a seriously interesting premise;

World ecology is now locked onto the same trajectory as popular culture. Just as American pop music and blue jeans, burgers and Coke have displaced indigenous cultures and foods in every land, so too are vigorous exotic invaders overwhelming native species and natural habitats. Some biologists warn of a ‘McDonaldization’ of work ecology. The earth is hurtling towards a one world culture and (maybe) a one world ecosystem.

But what’s most fascinating in our ‘native loving’ society is that, for the most part, rather than these organisims ‘sneaking in’, we’ve have been and continue to be complicit in bringing the non-native plants and animals to Australia.

The long list of ferals – they’re not what you think!

Rabbits are decended from domestic livestock gone wild and are just one of thosuands of purposely introduced ‘ferals’. Chickens, pigs, cabbages, wheat, apples, lemons, camels, rye, coffee, sheep, goats, radishes, perch, turnips, onions, salmon, red deer, carp peas, beans, strawberries, horses, coconut, trout, sisal, tea, figs, chillies, blackberries, cattle, ‘double gee’, olives, fennel, liquorice, grapes, buffalo, mango, donkey, banana, oats, pistacho, bream, and cashew were all brought in to feed people. Most of these have escaped and invaded forests and woodlands, replacing native species and forever changing the makeup of our natural environment.

Then there where the ‘stowaways’ – diseases and parasites brought on plants and animals; blight, fleas, mites, snails, weed burrs, spiders, algae, kelp, grasshoppers, slaters, fungus, weevils, cockroaches, beetles, moths, flies, mosquitos, wasps, bees, worms and rats and mice.

The ones we introduced either because we were homesick, or to help farmers; sparrows, Indian mynas, buffel grass, prickly pear, boxthorn, cotton, mosquito fish, cane toads, pasture grasses and foxes.

And those we brought because we liked having beautiful gardens; thistles, hemlock, Paterson’s curse, water hyacinth, lantana, privet, camphor laurel, lavender, holly, cats claw, rubber vine, lawn grass and St John’s Wort.

Or to keep as pets; guppies, mystery snails, goldfish, cichlids, platies, swordtails, finches and dozens of water plants. Again, all have ‘gone feral’ and are now living wild.

Along with these examples is a chapter on how, having not learned anything from our history of unsuccessful introductions, we still bring in new pasture plants, garden plants and internationally bred pets into Australia every day.

So where do cats fit?

So, half way through the book and there’s been barely a peep about ‘feral cats’. But rest assured, they get their own chapter and here’s where it gets really interesting, because the chapter is entitled; Cats – Scoundrels or Scapegoats?

Suburban cats, because they dispatch lots of birds, are often condemned as major killers, second only to their feral kin in the bush. But the evidence is not convincing. Cats kill millions of birds in gardens, true enough, but ecologically there is nothing wrong with this – predation is a fact of life. Birds are killed in forests, too, by falcons, owls, quolls, dingoes, snakes, goannas, even spiders. Pet pussies are simply the urban equivalent of these killers. Hunting by pet cats only becomes a worry if the death rate exceeds their birthrate. By and large, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The birds caught by cats are usually abundant species that thrive on development. Some of them – including willie wagtails, crested pigeons, and magpie larks – are probably faring better today than ever before.

This is certainly true of the common garden lizards that cats like to kill. Some studies show that leafy suburbs actually support more birds than intact forests, despite all the cats, because gardens planted with berries and nectar- rich flowers produce more food.

If any species is threatening bird in suburbia it is probably the pied currawong, a vicious native bird that raids nests and devours chicks and eggs. Native noisy miners also make mischief by driving away smaller birds.

But what about true free-roaming cats?

Feral cats in the bush however, can be a serious problem, though probably not to birds, which they seldom eat. Studies of their diet have revealed what cartoonists have always known; cats prefer rats, mice and other mammals. Rabbits are often their staple diet; cats may be helping the ecology by keeping bunny numbers down.

Rabbits may have helped wipe our small outback wallabies and bandicoots by taking their food and grazing down their cover. They are possibly the worst of all our pests because of the extrodinary numbers they can achieve.

Black rats are rarely portrayed as killers, but as destroyers of island life they may rank higher than cats. On Lord Howe island they knocked off five bird species, and on Christmas Island they helped exterminate Maclear’s rat, a unique native rodent. They reached the island in 1899 by hiding in hay, and ten years later no Maclear’s rats remained. Trout, too have driven several species close to extinction, an achievement that cats, on hard evidence, cannot match.

Do cats deserve all the attention?

Many conservationists treat cats as if they were our number one pest, but I believe foxes, rabbits, pigs, toads, trout and some weeds all pose a greater menace. Goats, donkeys, carp, mosquito fish, Pacific sea stars, green crabs, honeybees, bumblebees, and Amazonian earth worms concern me a great deal too. And worse than any of these is probably phytophthora, the dreaded fungal disease, along with the chytrid fungus killing our frogs. By saying this I don’t wish to exonerate cats, simply to broaden the debate.

Instead of heedlessly angering cat owners by vilifying their pets, we might look around us at all the other pests receiving less attention.

(highlighting mine)

No matter how many times the media shows an angry cat photo in defence of the latest cat cull (have you noticed the parallel to the media’s representation of pit bulls?), they are just one, amongst many animals and plants that are changing our landscape.

Cattle and sheep have probably contributed more to extinctions than foxes or rats.

As one university biologist complained to me, those people who rant about the cat should add ‘tle’ to the name and pursue a worthier rogue.

But we’re unlikely to see an anti-farming movement in Australia, nor an anti-aquarium pets, nor an anti-‘flowers in the garden movement’; so it seems unfair to single out cats when we’ve no interest in solving any of the other issues that would halt the ‘Mcdonaldization’ Low speaks of in his book.

Arrogant acts

It is also not as simple as we would like, to just ‘turn back the clock’ and eliminate ferals and weeds.

In the feral future, natives and exotics will become more and more interdependent.

Low goes on to describe how non-natives and natives are now engaged in complex life-sustaining relationships. Marram grasslands feed wombats, camphor laurel forests sustain vast flocks of fruit pigeons and long-billed and western corellas live supported by farmland. The rare southern brown bandicoots use blackberry brambles as protection against foxes and the nearly extinct Norfolk Island Parrot lives almost entirely upon olives and cherry guava. Rabbits, black rats and mice now sustain a large proportion of birds of prey and in some places young rabbits make up 60 to 90% of the diet of local eagles, harriers, kites and falcons. House mice make up as much as 97% of the diet of barn owls, while in the cities, the endangered peregine falcons are growing plump on street pigeons.

In short, just like all the other animals and plants in Australia, a new balance has been created with each participant bringing positives and negatives to the evolving ecology. To arbitrarily decide that one established organism is not worthy of their position, is just as arrogant human mistake, as the one the first settlers made when they introduced new animals and plants to Australia.

With what we know about cats in Australia and modern management techniques, the idea that we’re still championing the catch and kill techniques that we have been using since the 70’s is inexcusable.

The case for humane cat management

The modern cat care approach should be thus – keeping pet cats inside either part or all of the time, is a seriously good idea and should be encouraged for both cat welfare and environmental reasons. But this constant drive by the media, cat welfare groups and cat haters to have them exterminated from the suburbs is both undeserved and cruel.

Programs which help those cats already living in the environment, keep others from winding up abandoned and support owners to make responsible pet care decisions are the key to effective cat management in Australia.