Conservation or politics? Australia's target to kill 2 million cats

Doherty, Tim S.; Driscoll, Don A.; Nimmo, Dale G.; Ritchie, Euan G.; Spencer, Ricky‐John

doi:10.1111/conl.12633

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…; Doherty et al. ); applying assumptions about specific case studies to the world at large (Tantillo ; Schaffner ); low numbers of species that are threatened or endangered by free‐ranging cats on mainlands (Doherty et al. ); potential disconnects between lethal population management and conservation best practices and outcomes (Littin et al.…”

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…; Doherty et al. ); distractions from larger threats to biodiversity, such as habitat loss (Ferreira et al. ; Doherty et al.…”

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…; Doherty et al. ); a failure to address spatial, temporal, and ecological dynamics, such as proximity to human structures, predator guilds, predator–prey relations, and compensatory versus additive predation (Crooks & Soulé ; Ferreira et al. ; Gehrt et al.…”

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If any harmful measures are invoked, these require rigorous and ongoing evaluation of their need and monitoring of their efficacy (Littin & Mellor ; Littin ; Hadidian ; Hadidian ; Doherty et al. ).…”

Section: Beyond Moral Panicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the scientific documentation of negative population or biodiversity impacts in certain ecological contexts (Doherty et al 2016;Twardek et al 2017), there is also scientific evidence providing a more nuanced perspective on potential impacts that cautions against assuming the presence or number of cats is divorced from context. Examples include notable downward revisions of wild cat numbers in Australia (Legge et al 2017;Doherty et al 2019); applying assumptions about specific case studies to the world at large (Tantillo 2006;Schaffner 2018); low numbers of species that are threatened or endangered by free-ranging cats on mainlands (Doherty et al 2016); potential disconnects between lethal population management and conservation best practices and outcomes (Littin et al 2004;Doherty et al 2019); distractions from larger threats to biodiversity, such as habitat loss (Ferreira et al 2011;Doherty et al 2019); a failure to address spatial, temporal, and ecological dynamics, such as proximity to human structures, predator guilds, predator-prey relations, and compensatory versus additive predation (Crooks & Soulé 1999;Ferreira et al 2011;Gehrt et al 2013;Oro 2013); unsatisfactory and counter-productive outcomes to the removal of cats and their predators in some disturbed island and mainland ecosystems (Rayner et al 2007;Bergstrom et al 2009;Wallach et al 2010;Lazenby et al 2015;Marlow et al 2015;Fulton 2018); reappraisals of the positive roles nonnative species may play in disturbed or novel ecosystems (Wallach et al 2010;Schlaepfer 2018); appreciation for the role companion animals, such as cats, play in nature protection (Twardek et al 2017); bickering over a useful but not miraculous tool like TNR (Longcore et al 2009;Spehar & Wolf 2017); perceived cruelty on the part of some involved conservationists (Animal Legal & Historical Center 2013; Dell'Amore 2013); and challenges to the rigor and program of invasion biology itself (Chew & Hamilton 2011;<...>…”

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A moral panic over cats

Lynn

Santiago‐Ávila

Lindenmayer

et al. 2019

Conservation Biology

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Some conservationists believe that free‐ranging cats pose an enormous risk to biodiversity and public health and therefore should be eliminated from the landscape by any means necessary. They further claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. As much as we share a commitment to conservation of biodiversity and wild nature, we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic over cats. Those who question the ecological or epidemiological status of cats are not science deniers, and it is a false analogy to compare them with corporate and right‐wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change. There are good conservation and public‐health reasons and evidence to be skeptical that free‐ranging cats constitute a disaster for biodiversity and human health in all circumstances. Further, there are significant and largely unaddressed ethical and policy issues (e.g., the ethics and efficacy of lethal management) relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife. Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free‐ranging cats.

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Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…; Doherty et al. ); distractions from larger threats to biodiversity, such as habitat loss (Ferreira et al. ; Doherty et al.…”

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Beyond Moral Panicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conservation Reasons For Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A moral panic over cats

Lynn

Santiago‐Ávila

Lindenmayer

et al. 2019

Conservation Biology

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Evaluation of camera placement for detection of free‐ranging carnivores; implications for assessing population changes

Geyle

Stevens

Duffy

et al. 2020

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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1. Introduced carnivores are often cryptic, making it difficult to quantify their presence in ecosystems, and assess how this varies in relation to management interventions. Survey design should thus seek to improve detectability and maximize statistical power to ensure sound inference regarding carnivore population trends. Roads may facilitate carnivore movements, possibly leading to high detectability. Therefore, targeting roads may improve inferences about carnivore populations. 2. We assessed our ability to monitor feral cats Felis catus and red foxes Vulpes vulpes on-and off-road, with explicit consideration of the location of monitoring sites on our ability to detect population changes. We also assessed whether there was evidence of spatial or temporal interaction between these species that might influence their roaduse. 3. Surveys were conducted in a conservation reserve in southeastern Australia between 2016 and 2018. At each of 30 sites, we deployed two motion-sensor cameras, one on-road, and the other off-road. Using occupancy models, we estimated cat and fox occupancy and detectability, and conducted a power analysis to assess our ability to detect declines in occupancy under three monitoring regimes (efforts targeted equally on-and off-road, efforts targeted entirely off-road and efforts targeted entirely onroad). 4. On average, on-road detectability was seven times higher for cats and three times higher for foxes. Targeting survey effort on-road yielded the greatest power for detecting declines in both species, but our ability to detect smaller declines decreased with decreasing initial occupancy probability. No level of decline was detectable for cats This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Counting the Capital's cats: Estimating drivers of abundance of free‐roaming cats with a novel hierarchical model

Cove

Herrmann

Herrera

et al. 2023

Ecological Applications

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Free-roaming cats are a conservation concern in many areas but identifying their impacts and developing mitigation strategies requires a robust understanding of their distribution and density patterns. Urban and residential areas may be especially relevant in this process because free-roaming cats are abundant in these anthropogenic landscapes. Here, we estimate the occupancy and density of free-roaming cats in Washington D.C. and relate these metrics to known landscape and social factors. We conducted an extended camera trap survey of public and private spaces across D.C. and analyzed data collected from 1483 camera deployments from 2018 to 2020. We estimated citywide cat distribution by fitting hierarchical occupancy models and further estimated cat abundance using a novel random thinning spatial capture-recapture model that allows for the use of photos that can and cannot be identified to individual. Within this model, we utilized individual covariates that provided identity exclusions between photos of unidentifiable cats with inconsistent coat patterns, thus increasing the precision of abundance estimates. This combined model also allowed for unbiased estimation of density when animals cannot be identified to individual at the same rate as for free-roaming cats whose identifiability depended on their coat characteristics. Cat occupancy and abundance declined with increasing distance from residential areas, an effect that was more pronounced in wealthier neighborhoods. There was noteworthy absence of cats detected in larger public spaces and forests. Realized densities ranged from 0.02 to 1.75 cats/ha in sampled areas, resulting in a district-wide estimate of ~7296 free-roaming cats. Ninety percent of cat detections lacked collars and nearly 35% of known individuals were ear-tipped, indicative of district Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs. These results suggest that we mainly sampled and estimated the unowned cat subpopulation, such that indoor/outdoor housecats were not well represented. The precise estimation of cat population densities is difficult due to the varied behavior of subpopulations within free-roaming cat populations (housecats, stray and feral cats), but our methods provide a first step in establishing citywide

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Conservation or politics? Australia's target to kill 2 million cats

Cited by 23 publications

References 37 publications

A moral panic over cats

A moral panic over cats

Evaluation of camera placement for detection of free‐ranging carnivores; implications for assessing population changes

Counting the Capital's cats: Estimating drivers of abundance of free‐roaming cats with a novel hierarchical model

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