alt Hacker NewsThis is a widely-cited myth, and almost impossible to measure in practice. What does "all the local wildlife" even mean? Is the threat here that birds are going to go extinct because of cats? Not likely, and the burden of proof is on the people repeating this mistaken belief.
Using "think of the birds" as a justification for imprisoning your cat for their entire lives is also pretty crummy. It's called wildlife because they exist in the wilderness. Even if cats kill a large number of birds, so what? Those birds don't have a happy, loving home with emotional bonds to an actual human.
If you think this logic is flawed, explain why you're fine with flies dying but not birds. I bet you've swatted a few in your time.
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In my neighborhood some people let their cats run around loose. Then the local wildlife (coyotes) eats the cats, and the idiot cat owners whine that the city needs to "do something" about the coyotes.
In Australia, where I live, pet cats are responsible for a huge amount of damage to wildlife, as per https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-...
From the linked paper:
Pet cats, despite their valued role as companion animals, are a major threat to wildlife. Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia. As such the management of cats has major implications for Australia’s wildlife and ecosystems. [...]
Many owners believe their cats don’t hunt because they never come across evidence of killed animals. However, studies of pet cats using video-tracking collars or scat analysis have established that the vast majority (85%) of the animals killed by pet cats are not brought home.
On average, each roaming, hunting pet cat kills more than three animals every week. The numbers add up. On average, over a year each roaming and hunting pet cat in Australia kills 186 animals. This number includes 110 native animals (40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals). [...]
[For example] In Mandurah, Western Australia, the disturbance and hunting of just one pet cat and one stray cat caused the total breeding failure of a colony of more than 100 pairs of fairy terns. [...]
The findings presented here are summarised from an analysis of the results of many dozens of studies that was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub. The research team included scientists from The University of Queensland, The Australian National University, Charles Darwin University, The University of Sydney and Murdoch University. The research received funding from the Australian Government through the National Environmental Science Program and was published in Wildlife Research.
> Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List [1]
Cats are probably a leading cause of mortality in birds. [2] Domestic cats are not native to North America. The birds here would not have evolved to avoid them (and beyond that, domestic cat numbers are not limited by prey availability because they're pets bred and fed by humans).
You'll find plenty of studies with evidence that domestic cats are probably bad for bird populations. [3][4]
But to be fair, buildings/glass windows kill a lot of birds too. [5]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
[2] https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds#:~:tex...
[3] https://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/13/7/322
[4] https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wsb.737
[5] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...