The impacts of free roaming cats

When I was in my early 20s, I scooped a small, sickly kitten out from the busy cor­ner of a farm shed. I took it home and, just like that, stepped into one of conservation’s most con­troversial, and important issues: cats. As a beloved house pet and invaluable pest con­trol tool, domestic cats have followed humanity to every continent in the 9,000 years since being domesticated. Today, there are between 110 and 140 million cats in North America alone, about half of which are wild, or “feral.” What is the problem? The problem is, domestic cats are tremendously effective little hunters. In fact, researchers have found that whether or not a cat is fed has little to no impact on its hunting habits — it’s just instinct. Add to that an exceedingly high reproductive rate, the unique ability to thrive near human habita­tion, and a general demeanor that screams “don’t you dare try to eat me,” and you’ve got yourself the quintessential invasive species. Statistics illustrate the point Cats kill between 100 to 350 million birds a year in Canada and roughly 1.3 to 4 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals per year in the USA. Cats are the single largest cause of anthropo­genic (human-related) bird, small mammal, and reptile death in North America. They are also responsible for more than 10 times as many bird deaths as windows and more than 8,000 times as many as wind turbines. Worldwide, cats have driven at least 63 species to extinctions, which is 26% of all reptile, bird, and small mammal extinctions in recorded history. At last estimate, cats are con­tributing to the extinction of more than 367 species. The list of organisms currently imperilled by our cuddly compan­ions range from Green sea turtles all the way to (former) game spe­cies like the Lower Keys marsh rabbit. In fact, research indicates domestic cats prey on an array of game, including small mammals like rabbits and squirrels, ground nesting birds like quail, and even turkeys and waterfowl. Now what? Although free-roaming pets do contribute sub­stantially to these issues, the biggest offenders are feral cats, which are far more common than you might think. These wild populations exist in virtually every city, town, and rural community in our country. The most common mitigation approach is known as trap, neuter, release, or TNR, which essentially aims to stagnate a population by doing exactly