Nature’s interconnectedness means demonizing a single species in an effort to return the environment to a pre-human inhabited state – without removing the humans – is not only cruel, but counter productive to efforts to protect wildlife…
“The study (Island mammal extinctions are determined by interactive effects of life history, island biogeography and mesopredator suppression – Global Ecology and Biogeography) yielded some surprising results. Native mammals were most likely to die off on islands that had rats… extinction rates on such islands ranged from 15% to 30%, but when cats, foxes, or dingoes were present, the rates plummeted to just over 10%—not much higher than on islands without any introduced predators, the scientists reported at the meeting and online this month in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.”
We need to remember that on the mainland ‘eradication’ of cats is unfeasible and unrealistic, however research from islands does provide an insight into what widespread eradication efforts may actually be. Not necessarily positive.
The scientists also found that native mammals fared only slightly worse on islands with cats than on islands without them. Moreover, the presence of foxes and dingoes on islands seemed to give native species a slight overall boost. “I was really surprised,” Hanna says. “I thought I’d made a big mistake.”
Hanna and Cardillo also found that rats’ impact was most pronounced on small mammals—those weighing less than 2.7 kilograms—although the scientists are unsure how much of this influence was due to direct predation as opposed to competition for food and other resources or disease spread. Rats also had the greatest effect on islands within 2.1 kilometers of mainland Australia.
The study includes “a very nice, large data set, and a very well-constructed and complete analysis of the problem,” says Phillip Cassey, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide Environment Institute.
These are the kinds of real-data studies that both animal welfare groups and ‘environmentalists’ should be using to base their cat strategies on – namely that programs which manage cat numbers and don’t rely on culling, will be more effective, more humane, more holistic and more forgiving to any natural balance, than the scorched-earth approach of ‘eradication’ most currently advocate. But given data and effectiveness is not usually considered relevant to the discussion, let’s just say I won’t be holding my breath.
See also: The study every cat advocacy group & environmentalist should read
Cats – an easy target for lazy environmentalists
