ANIMAL PEOPLE is the
leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage
of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has
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MILWAUKEE––A brown tabby named Junior and three unidentified
cats found shot on a road near a Sheboygan cemetery on April 11 were apparent
early casualties of a Wisconsin Conservation Congress proposal to allow
hunters to shoot feral cats. On April 11 the statewide Conservation Congress
caucuses ratified the proposal, 6,830 (57%) in favor, 5,201 (43%) against.
Junior, normally an indoor cat, escaped on Easter Sunday, April 3, from
the home of Kirk and Liz Obear, and their daughters, ages 9 and 12. They
put up posters and searched for him. A neighbor found his remains, and
the remains of the other cats, while walking her dog about a mile away.
Before shooting cats becomes legal in Wisconsin, the proposal must be
formally endorsed by the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, which was
to consider it on May 13. The Wisconsin Legislature would then have to
pass it in the form of a law. Governor Jim Doyle would have to sign the
law.
“I don’t think Wisconsin should become known as a state where
we shoot cats,” Doyle said.
“State senator Scott Fitzgerald, co-chair of the Legislature’s
powerful Joint Finance Committee, said he will ‘work against any
proposed legislation to legalize shooting feral cats,’” reported
Ryan J. Foley of Associated Press.
“It’s not the responsibility of the DNR to regulate cats,”
added Natural Resources and Transportation Committee chair Neal Kedzie.
Any Wisconsin voter could attend the Conservation Congress meetings and
cast a ballot, but cat lovers mobilized too late to overcome the “home
field” advantage of hunters and birders.
“Attendance at the Conservation Congress hearings was 13,281, more
than twice the number who showed up last year,” reported Meg Jones
of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “The 20-year average is about
7,000,” Jonwa wrote, “though more than 30,000 attended in 1999,”
the year that the caucuses voted to start a mourning dove hunting season.
Debate over hunting mourning doves threatened to split the traditional
political alliance of hunters and birders. Hard feelings and litigation
lingered for more than a year after the dove season finally started in
2003. The proposal to declare an open season on feral cats reunited the
factions.
The cat-shooting proposal was put before the Conservation Congress by
Mark Smith of La Crosse. Formally, the proposal was to designate feral
cats as an “unprotected” species. They are already “unprotected”
in Minnesota and South Dakota.
“I look at feral cats as an invasive species, plain and simple,”
Smith told Associated Press.
The Smith proposal was not formally endorsed by the Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources, but DNR staff in frequent media statements played
up the alleged threat to wildlife from feral cats, inflating estimates
of cat predation on birds in Wisconsin to between 47 million and 139 million
per year.
Birders nationwide, and especially in Wisconsin, have been inflamed against
cats by excessive projections of cat predation on birds promoted since
1996 by University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife biology professor Stanley
A. Temple. Temple argues that cats kill from 7.8 to 100 million birds
per year in Wisconsin alone, with 39 million a “reasonable estimate.”
About 7.8 million is actually the upper end of likelihood, based on the
preponderance of data from other sources.
Credible estimates of bird predation by cats nationwide range from 100
million per year, projected in 2003 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Migratory Bird Management Office biologist Al Manville, to 134 million
per year, projected in 2000 by Carol Fiore of the Wichita State University
Department of Biological Sciences.
About half of all pet cat keepers allow their cats to go out, but surveys
of cat-keepers indicate that those whose cats stay in have about twice
as many cats, reflecting the greater longevity of indoor cats.
Estimates of cat predation on birds going above the 100-134 million range
tend to overestimate both the number of pet cats who roam and the number
of feral cats, which is currently circa 5-10 million in winter and about
twice as high at the peak of “kitten season”––half
the level of 15 years ago, before neuter/return came into widespread practice.
