Reports suggest that cats kill upward of 2.4 billion birds in the US every year, threatening the populations of certain wild bird species. Add in the mice, rats, squirrels, rabbits and other small animals hunted by cats and the scope of the devastation is incredible.
So what should we do about this problem? Is increased spaying and neutering a solution? Should owners keep their cats indoors at all times? Or are there no good solutions, and we should just accept that the populations of certain small mammals and birds will likely continue to dwindle, and there’s nothing to be done?
Our panel addresses these and other questions relating to the outdoor cat issue on this segment of The Point with Ana Kasparian.
Host: Ana Kasparian
Panel:
Wendy Carrillo: Host – Knowledge is Power show on KPWR Los Angeles
Jimmy Dore: Host – The Jimmy Dore Show on TYT Network
Jackie Koppell: Host – Newsy News
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Comments
Thanks for the conversation! I want to let the audience know that many conservation organizations ARE very worried about the ecological impacts of outdoor cats. If anyone is interested in more information, I recommend going to http://www.abcbirds.org/cats.
@DolanStory – Just to let you know, cats also are a known source of plague.
I am a cat owner, and a farm owner. so many people dump their cats off on my road. I have been trying to take care of the feral issue at my place. I started a go fund me page to help me raise money to get them spayed and neutered other the take out the shot gun. http://www.gofundme.com/811e1c. It appears no one caners. We don’t have animal control and the shelters are full. And by the way I have many snakes,
birds, and rodents on my place we still need to use poison. Look up the kill stats for poison.
On this issue of feral cats when the cats where culled from European cities during the middle ages it helped facilitate the spread of plague and the cities that had culled cats had more deaths from black death than cities that had left the cats alone because of the amount of rodents that were killed every day
There are a number of native predators in North America that would help to keep the rodent population in check. Raptors, snakes, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, etc can all do the job.
Cats are not necessary for pest control.