The study concludes that the biggest problem is the loss of the birds' winter habitat in the tropics due to deforestation. Rappole of the Smithsonian Conservation and Research Center. Forest Service's Northeastern Research Station and John H. The decline in songbird populations is caused by many factors, Mountain says, including habitat loss, pollution, pesticides, and window strikes. The 3,300-acre (1,300-hectare) Best Friends animal shelter, which is the largest in the country, not only cares for feral and domestic cats-it also cares for birds. Mountain said his views on this issue are not one-sided. Instead, he said their diet consists of mice, insects, and lizards. "So the last thing a feral cat wants to do is waste his energy chasing after birds." "Ferals are savvy, don't have enough to eat, and have to live like real (wild) animals," Mountain said. Michael Mountain, one of the founders of Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah, says there is no evidence that feral cats are to blame for a decline in the bird population at large.
"If a cat finds the colony, it can destroy the colony in a few days, if not overnight," Jurek said. The small white birds are part of an intense monitoring program with a tremendous number of volunteers who watch the colonies throughout the six-month nesting season. Two National Geographic Explorers, who are also big cat experts, say this was a risky situation.įor more than ten years, Jurek says, feral and domestic cats have been a persistent problem in California, killing one or two colonies of least terns each year. In urban areas, he said, there are hundreds of cats per square mile (1.6 square kilometers)-more cats than nature can support.Įxact numbers are unknown, but some experts estimate that each year domestic and feral cats kill hundreds of millions of birds, and more than a billion small mammals, such as rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks.įeline predators are believed to prey on common species, such as cardinals, blue jays, and house wrens, as well as rare and endangered species, such as piping plovers and Florida scrub jays. "Cats do kill wildlife to a significant degree, which is not a popular notion with a lot of people," he said. Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game, has kept a close eye on the impact feral and free-roaming domestic cats have on native species, like the California least tern, a federal endangered bird that nests along the coast. Thousands of volunteers and animal welfare groups throughout the country stepped forward in the early 1990s to control the wild cat population through mass sterilization programs. That's caused a chorus of hisses from feral cat advocates who say the cats are unjustly being blamed for killing wildlife. The organizations want the cats removed from the environment and taken to animal shelters, where they are often killed. The number concerns wildlife and ornithology organizations that believe these stealthy predators decimate bird populations and threaten public health.
Some feline experts now estimate 70 million feral cats live in the United States, the consequence of little effort to control the population and of the cat's ability to reproduce quickly. So for decades feral cats have remained untouchable. Many city and county animal control agencies are mandated only to deal with dogs-not cats. Raised without human contact, they quickly revert to a wild state and form colonies wherever food and shelter are available.
But they're really wild animals.įeral cats are the offspring of stray or abandoned household pets. You may have seen them wandering through parks or languishing behind restaurants.
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