An article in the Canberra Times today, sure to stick in the craw of every cat lover and No Kill advocate:
RSPCA wants cat curfews made a pet project
Canberra’s cat curfew laws have been so successful they should be introduced across the ACT, according to the RSPCA.
RSPCA ACT chief executive Michael Linke said introducing cat curfews in older suburbs adjoining nature reserves should occur during the next decade.
The main reason this is such a disappointing position for the RSPCA ACT to take, is that continuing to pigeon hole cats into ‘fully owned’ and ‘unowned and dead’ is in direct conflict with their assertion that “staff and volunteers are committed to saving lives” – the lives of unowned cats are simply discounted as not worth saving.
Cats don’t simply ‘vanish’ because we implement a 24hr a day cat curfew and decide that they shouldn’t exist in certain areas. It take active cat-culling programs – trapping and killing in urban areas – in a largely futile effort to drive them out. It is a large-scale cat cull with no hope of end. This is what the RSPCA ACT is supporting.
How are these laws being executed in the ACT? Below is Shane Rattenbury, ACT Minister for Territory & Municipal Services, speaking on the laws on the recent ‘Eradicat’ program on Insight. Note the section where he talks about how they process and work to save unowned animals;
What was that? You say he didn’t mention unowned cats? Well, no. Because it’s much more difficult to sell the ‘benefits’ of a program which is largely an enormous cat cull, that, if the RSPCA ACT have their way, will no longer be applied to new housing estates, but also become retroactive and applied to all of the ACT.
Since 2000, it has been “a strict liability offence under the Domestic Animals Act to own a sexually entire cat”. It is an offence to keep a cat which is not micro-chipped. These two factors in combination, we’ve been told, leads to decreased impoundments, and increased reclaims. Unfortunately, the actual results simply don’t back up these assertions.
Cat intakes have remained pretty much constant since 2000 – sitting between 2,000 and 3,000 per year. Reclaims remain tragically low.
But the RSPCA ACT are heralding this non-success as an extraordinary achievement. In direct conflict of a ‘No Kill’ belief system, driving for programs which keep animals out of pounds, they want to increase the capacity of rangers to seize and impound unowned cats, implementing a 24hr cat curfew statewide.
This is a terrible betrayal of the animals the RSPCA ACT purport to care for. Promoting a ‘no tolerance’ approach to unowned cats, is both draconian and inhumane.
This week, the announcement that the ACT Government has announced its support for a new purpose built animal welfare center for the RSPCA ACT. The government is set to hand over even more money to the RSPCA charity, who continues to promote killing as the major tool for animal management. While the government is yet to announce the exact amount being given, is is likely to be a significant amount, and rather than be a cause to celebrate, pet lovers should lament the continued rewarding and support by their government of a failed model.
What a missed opportunity.
See also: The way to No Kill – radically rethinking our approach to cats
In the ACT huge tracts of bushland are being destroyed for new housing developments, and thousands of native animals are killed on an ever-expanding network of roads. And every year, around seven hundred kangaroos are deliberately and violently killed by the ACT government. Yet it is cats that are accused of “decimating wildlife”.