Cat Hunting?

[Darrell Lawrence]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=8&u=/ap/20050412/ap_on_re_us/killing_wild_cats

Wow....

[kitty]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=8&u=/ap/20050412/ap_on_re_us/killing_wild_cats

Wow....

This little Kitty could put a new spin on cat hunting!:devil: :D

[Darrell Lawrence]

:D :LOL:

[Damocles]

Our schools need help.

We have fruit loops(Not the breakfast cereal, I mean deranged legislators) in Madison and Washington.

We have tremendous social and environmental issues plaguing us.

We are runnming out of OIL.

And these nutters are declaring open season on Felis domestici?

:mad:

[cranky1c]

So this is where the homeland security money is going......

[Artemis]

We have tremendous social and environmental issues plaguing us.

And these nutters are declaring open season on Felis domestici?

:mad:

In all fairness feral cats are an environmental problem and can wipe out entire populations of species if there isn't another top predator, like coyotes, to at least control their numbers somewhat. For years cat killers have been hired on San Clemente Island to try to prevent them from killing not only the endangered loggerhead shrike but also the island kit fox in additions to all the reptiles and other birds. They are never going to eliminate them, they breed too fast, they merely keep the numbers down a little. Letting the hunters deal with the problem probably generates revenue as well has helping solve the environmental problem they cause.

[Lara]

The real problem would be in the application of the law if it was passed. If anyone with a small game liscence can start shooting at cats, the potential for pets to be slaughtered is very real: some mistakes will be 'deliberate' becasue its a ready source of practice, and the defense will be I didn't see the collar, and it wasn't acting very friendly.

In Australia it is legal to shoot cats in conservation zones. But usually in parks close to suburbia they are trapped, so they can be checked before being humanely destroyed. We are also more likely to e tag our pets than collar them.
its still a hugely emotional issue.

There is a big difference in allowing people to shoot feral cats in the middle of a wilderness area compared to inhabited areas.

The pro arguamnet cites studies with feral cats decimating small widelife (cats are very efficeient and highy adapted hunters)
The anti cites that many of the prey species are introduced pests anyway which don't have another equivalent predator This has caused the kill cats zealots to back off a bit as many of the native birds have their population wiped even more effectively by aggressive introduced species than by cat predation.

When my husband lived at Roxby Downs, (a mining twon in the South Australian outback) a local officer was permitted to shoot domestics that strayed more than 500m from the town limits, yet he was so zealous, lots of cats disappeared and then were claimed to have been right out the limit totally the other side of town. Without a resident vet in town, many owners saw their family pet crawl home with horrible injuries and die on the back porch in agony.
He was undoing any goodwill the program had been set up with, and it was a PR disaster for the town owners!!

Cheers
Lara

[Damocles]

Damocles :salute:

The thought of all those bloody amateurs running around with their "varmint" rifles irritates me to no end.

Hospital emergency rooms are already clogged with enough self-inflicted accidental gunshot and whatnot wounded patients without adding another class of inept "Danial Boone want-to-bes" who can't hit a barn, trying to lead and shoot, some small quick hard to see and hit and relatively harmless(to us) kitties.

These are CATS!

Trap and spay I say.

Keep the cathunters out of the woods and the hospitals......my health insurance rates are already too high! :/:

[emerita]

....here in Florida, the Humane society has started trapping the wild cats and sterlizing them...but then again, here, they ARE part of the food chain.... It's the Gators we have to worry about..... LOL *The link was gone by the time I got here to read it, so I am not really clear in which direction the story goes*..... http://ina-t.gmxhome.de/test/45.gif