National Zoo bird researcher is charged with attempting to poison feral cats
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:
Feral kitten
WASHINGTON D.C.–Alley Cat Allies and Alley Cat Rescue on May 26, 2011 asked the Smithsonian Institution to suspend National Zoo Migratory Bird Center researcher Nico Dauphine. Dauphine was charged three days earlier with attempted animal cruelty for allegedly trying to poison feral cats. If convicted, Dauphine could be fined up to $1,000 and could be sentenced to 180 days in jail. Dauphine denied the offense in a brief statement issued by her attorney.
“Evidence shows she was putting rat poison and antifreeze in cat food left for community cats in her neighborhood of Columbia Heights, in Washington D.C.,” elaborated the Alley Cat Rescue blog. “Alley Cat Rescue vehemently disagrees with keeping Dauphine in her current position at the National Zoo and believes she should be removed until an investigation into these allegations of animal cruelty has been completed.”
As well as requesting that Dauphine be suspended from her job, Alley Cat Allies asked the Smithsonian “for confirmation that she is no longer conducting her domestic cat research,” said Alley Cat Allies president Becky Robinson. Dauphine, until the cruelty charge became public, was seeking participants in a study in which small cameras were mounted on free-roaming cats to document how they hunt birds.
“We know what she’s doing would in no way jeopardize our animal collection at the National Zoo or jeopardize wildlife,” National Zoo associate director of communications Pamela Baker-Masson told ABC News, “so we feel perfectly comfortable that she continue her research.”
“Residents living near Malcolm X Park have long seen feral cats in the neighborhood, some even setting out food for the animals,” reported Tim Persinko and Derrick Ward of NBCWashington.com. “But some neighbors believed that someone was trying to harm the cats, and they alerted neighborhood animal advocates to the problem.”
A Washington Humane Society stakeout, including video surveillance video, produced the evidence leading to the charges against Dauphine. “If she did do this,” Washington Humane Society vice president for external affairs Scott Giacoppo told ABC News, “we naturally would be concerned about her being around all animals. Whoever would do such a thing is a threat to all animals. It [poisoning] is a slow and painful death. It was callous and showed complete disregard for animals’ well-being.”
“The Humane Society of the United States applauds the Washington Humane Society for its investigation into the alleged illegal poisoning of feral cats, and urges full prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office if warranted,” commented HSUS chief operating officer Mike Markarian. “Regardless of one’s views on cat-bird conflicts, poisoning feral cats is short-sighted, criminal, and just the wrong response,” Markarian said.
Markarian is also president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which earlier in 2011 fought what Markarian termed “the most absurd bill of 2011,” introduced in Utah, “which would have allowed the shooting or bludgeoning of any stray cat believed to be feral. That bill was sent to the litter box,” Markarian noted, “and instead, Utah enacted a positive measure that officially sanctions trap-neuter-return (TNR) as a humane method of managing feral cat populations.”
TNR was popularized in the U.S. largely through the success of a project begun at Stanford University in 1988 by volunteers including then-undergrad Nathan Winograd, who now heads the No Kill Advocacy Center in Oakland, California; a 1991-1992 project in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, conducted by the founders of ANIMAL PEOPLE; and projects done in the Washington D.C. area, beginning in 1990, by Becky Robinson, now president of Alley Cat Aliies, and Louise Holton, cofounder of Alley Cat Allies, now president of Alley Cat Rescue. Robinson and Holton started in the Adams/ Morgan neighborhood of Washington DC., just a few blocks from Columbia Heights, where Dauphine was allegedly caught.
Dauphine in March 2009 complained to Blake Aued of the Athens (Georgia) Banner Herald that “her yard is a wildlife habitat, and feral cats nearly wiped out all the birds that live there,” Aued wrote.
Previously associated with Cornell University and the Zoological Society of London, Dauphine “is known for her articles on cat predation and anti-TNR sentiments,” summarized Alley Cat Allies. “Back in 2008 when she lived in Athens, Georgia, Dauphine wrote to the St. Petersburg Times saying, ‘Cats may be the single biggest direct cause of bird mortality, far outnumbering all other causes (including human hunters) put together!’”
The usual range of bird deaths caused by cats found in data-based studies is from about 100 million, projected by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ornithologist Albert Manville, to about 134 million, projected in 2000 by Carol Fiore of the Wichita State University Department of Biological Sciences–and Fiore estimated that approximately twice as many pet cats are allowed to roam as other studies showed.
A variety of recent studies put bird mortality from roadkills at about 220 million per year, from agricultural spraying at upward of 320 million, and from collisions with windows at circa 100 million. Hunters shoot about 74.4 million wild birds per year, including about 35 million mourning doves.
Total U.S. wild bird mortality, from all causes, may be about five billion per year, but few studies have tried to determine either total bird population or total mortality. Studies such as the annual National Audubon Society Christmas bird count and the USFWS Breeding Bird Survey produce seasonal estimates of species in particular habitats, which are difficult to extrapolate into year-round estimates of all species in all habitats.
The American Bird Conservancy web site provides links to two of Dauphine’s articles, Impacts of Free-Ranging Domestic Cats (Felis Catus) on Birds and What Conservation Biologists Can Do to Counter Trap-Neuter-Return.
Vox Felina
Both have been extensively critiqued by Vox Felina blogger and science writer Peter J. Wolf, who describes Vox Felina as “a repository of research notes, news stories, correspondence, and associated commentary focused on a range of issues related to ‘the plight’ of feral cats in general, and trap-neuter-return in particular.”
Wolf focuses on what he terms “the lack of rigorous research related to the efficacy and impact of TNR, the flawed science promoted by many TNR opponents, the unbalanced-often dishonest-nature of the feral cat/TNR debate, and the disastrous consequences. There are legitimate issues to be debated regarding the efficacy, environmental impact, and morality of TNR,” Wolf acknowledges. “But attempts at an honest, productive debate are hampered-if not derailed entirely-by the dubious claims so often put forward by TNR opponents.”
Blogged Wolf after Dauphine’s arrest, “Regular readers will recognize Dauphine’s name immediately, as I’ve been highly critical of her work from the very beginning of Vox Felina. It was, for example, a paper she co-authored with Robert J. Cooper, published in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Partners In Flight Conference, that Steve Holmer, senior policy advisor for American Bird Conservancy, used to justify his bogus claim that “there are aboutŠ160 million feral cats” in the U.S., about 10 times more than recent data-based estimates indicate.
“I’ve pointed out, more than once,” Wolf continued, “Dauphine’s dubious scholarship-citing David Jessup’s unattributed ‘estimate’ of “60 to 100 million feral and abandoned cats in the United States,’ for example. Or ignoring the results of multiple surveys suggesting that roughly two-thirds of pet cats are kept indoors, in stark contrast to Dauphine’s assertion that ’65%, or 57 million, are free-ranging outdoor cats for at least some portion of the day.’
“Dauphine also authored Follow the Money: The Economics of TNR Advocacy,” Wolf recalled, “where she does to the political and economic aspects of the debate what she and her colleagues have been doing to the scientific side of the debate for years now,” exaggerating the feral cat defense budgets of organizations such as the Best Friends Animal Society, while understating the resources of anti-TNR organizations including the American Bird Conservancy, National Audubon Society, and her own employer, the National Zoo Migratory Bird Center.
“If these charges prove to be true,” Wolf concluded, “Dauphine is going to have a lot of explaining-and perhaps a little time-to do.”
Dauphine was charged two weeks after Hawaii Second Circuit Judge Richard Bissen upheld a felony cruelty charge filed against Krister Garcia, 21, one of four men who allegedly used hunting bows to kill three feral cats between August 23 and September 2, 2010. The cats were part of a sterilized colony maintained by caretaker Jody Sparks. Bissen rejected the contention of Garcia’s attorney, Ben Lowenthal, that feral cats are not protected by the Hawaiian felony cruelty law. “The Legislature found that violence, whether against humans or animals, must not be tolerated in our society,” responded Bissen.
But Galveston Ornithological Society founder Jim Stevenson won a mistrial on November 16, 2007 when four jurors were unalterably persuaded that killing feral cats is not illegal in Texas. Stevenson admitted shooting a cat from a colony attended by San Luis Pass toll bridge employee John Newland, but Stevenson contended the killing was necessary to protect endangered piping plovers.
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