Cat-haters Down Under set up rare birds for an attack of H5N1 avian flu

Attempted cat purges overlook value of predation to maintaining the health of species

WELLINGTON, New Zealand;  PERTH,  Australia––The cat news from Down Under on June 28,  2023 provoked a global explosion of hissing and spitting,  focusing––as cat news from Down Under usually does––on ever more cruel,  bizarre,  and inevitably futile attempts to exterminate cats,  rationalized as always by absurdly inflated claims from birders about the numbers of birds whom cats purportedly kill.

Cat-killing contest

“Animal welfare protestors at a hunting contest in rural New Zealand faced off against a group of child attendees,  some clutching dead feral cats, who repeatedly chanted the word ‘meat’ at demonstrators,”  reported Guardian correspondent Charlotte Graham-McLay.

“The North Canterbury event had previously scrapped the category for killing feral cats after it was criticized by animal welfare groups,”  Graham-McLay summarized,  “but it was reinstated following apparent support from the local community.”

(See New Zealand exempts cats from killing contest, finds cure for FIP.)

The killing contest organizers claimed that “About 1,500 competitors – 400 of them children – killed hundreds of animals during the contest,  including 243 feral cats,”  Graham-McLay said.

How cat predation helps birds

Overlooked by the North Canterbury cat pogrom sponsors,  and by practically everyone else pushing the campaign to make New Zealand “predator free” by 2050,  is that cats there,  as everywhere else worldwide,  are the major predators of mice and rats,  whose egg predation poses a far greater threat to ground-nesting flightless birds such as the kiwi,  the national symbol of New Zealand,  than cats and all other non-native predators of adult birds combined.

Also overlooked,  not only by New Zealand birders but by birders worldwide,  is that while cats preferentially hunt rodents,  by night,  when cats do hunt birds the birds they kill are most often debilitated by disease or injury.

This is especially relevant to New Zealand,  because as vulnerable as flightless birds such as the kiwi are to cats and other introduced predators,  they are even more vulnerable to introduced infectious diseases.  The bird whom a cat––or a brush possum or a weasel––kills may be the bird who otherwise spreads a malady such as the H5N1 avian influenza among a bird population having little history of exposure and of building resistance to non-native pathogens.

H5N1 has reached New Zealand at least once

New Zealand––and Australia as well––are thousands of miles away from the mainland Asian,  North American,  and European nations which in recent years have killed multi-millions of poultry in mostly futile efforts to slow the spread of H5N1.

But the nations Down Under are scarcely immune to the threat.  The New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in September 2008 reported finding low pathogenic H5N1 in two mallard ducks.

Fifteen years later,  high pathogenic H5N1 is circulating globally more widely and rapidly than ever before.  If and when it reaches New Zealand,  as it almost inevitably will at some point,  an absence of  predation to intercept sick birds before they infect others could bring about an overnight catastrophe for the New Zealand bird population,  irrespective of any and all conservation efforts.

Not that killing cats in the name of conservation seems to be accomplishing much.

“In one part of the South Island,”  mentioned Graham-McLay,  “between 150 and 200 feral cats are still caught each year,  18 years into an initiative to remove them.”

Compound 1080 & the “Felixer”

Western Australia state environment minister Reece Whitby meanwhile announced that his department plans to spend $7.6 million Australian dollars over the next five years to deploy sixteen “Felixer” cat-killing machines and air drop 880,000 poison baits meant to kill cats.

“The Felixer device uses lasers and cameras to identify feral cats and foxes from other animals before spraying them with 8 milligrams of toxic gel,”  explained Eli Green via the NCA NewsWire media release service.

Thylation,  maker of the “Felixer,”  contends that most Australian native carnivores are too small to activate Felixers and dingoes are too large.

Dingos in danger

“However,”  Green mentioned,  “the device can be activated by dingo pups,  which means that they will not be suitable in all areas at all times of the year.

“From the funding,”  Green added,  “$2 million will go toward grants for local community organizations,  farmer groups and traditional owners to fight feral cats.”

Such schemes,  University of Queensland emeritus professor of veterinary science Jacquie Rand and WellBeing International founder Andrew Rowan jointly pointed out earlier in 2023,  have “little obvious conservation merit (and nobody has demonstrated that such a cull is achievable). Other invasive mammalian species in Australia (e.g., foxes, rabbits, and horses) have also been targeted without much noticeable progress in reducing their numbers. Data show baiting with Compound 1080 has largely been ineffective in achieving a sustained decrease in feral cat numbers over several years and that native animals are also at risk of poisoning.”

Neuter/return banned in Australia

By contrast,  the only experimental neuter/return program ever authorized in Australia discovered that “sterilization of around 30 cats per 1,000 residents in a year produces a 30-50% reduction in cat intake into the community animal shelter within 12-18 months,”  accomplished “in one rural town,  one suburb in Queensland,  one suburb in New South Wales,  and the city of Banyule (population 130,000) in Victoria,”  Rand and Rowan mentioned.

Releasing feral cats,  once trapped,  is otherwise illegal throughout Australia,  regardless of the cats’ sterilization status.

Data,  finally,  on Australian shelter cats

A study newly published in the journal Animals,  by Rand and fellow Australian veterinary researchers Diana Chua and John Morton,  further demonstrates the potential for neuter/return to please both Australian cat advocates and conservationists,  and those in New Zealand too,  other than the most inveterate cat-haters,  who prefer killing cats over obtaining results by reducing cat predation.

The study,  “Stray and Owner-Relinquished Cats in Australia—Estimation of Numbers Entering Municipal Pounds,  Shelters and Rescue Groups and Their Outcomes,”  is based on data collected from as many pounds,  shelters,  and rescue groups as possible in 2018–2019,  with “Unavailable municipal pound data imputed based on known data and the human population.”

This is essentially the same method that ANIMALS 24-7 used to produce annual estimates of U.S. animal shelter traffic in both dogs and cats from 1993 through 2014.

(See Record low shelter killing raises both hopes & questions.)

Numbers similar to pre-TNR data from U.S.

“We estimated a total of 179,615 stray and surrendered cat admissions to pounds,  shelters,  and rescue groups in Australia in 2018–2019 (7.2/1000 human residents) and that 5% of admissions were reclaimed,  65% rehomed,  and 28% euthanized,”  Rand,  Chua,  and Morton reported.

“Municipal councils operating their own pounds rehomed 26% and euthanized 46% of cat intake compared to 65% rehomed and 25% euthanized for welfare organizations,”  Rand,  Chua,  and Morton found.

The data is closely comparable to the numbers that ANIMAL 24-7 found in the U.S. during the 1990s,  before neuter/return dramatically lowered shelter cat intakes and also before the post-2010 advent of “return-to-field” of non-feral cats hopelessly distorted shelter admission data as a data reference point indicative of feral cat population trends.

(See D.C. Cat Count confirms low feral cat population, lots of free-roaming pets,  TNR achieves 72% drop in kitten birth rate, finds Alley Cat Rescue and TNR boomed before COVID-19 hit, Alley Cat Rescue survey shows.)

Neuter/return vs. Compound 1080

The preponderance of data,  both from New Zealand and Australia and from the U.S. over the past 30 years,  suggests that properly funded and well-managed neuter/return programs,  as opposed to haphazard,  poorly funded local volunteer efforts,  would be the fastest,  most inexpensive way to reduce cat predation,  irrespective of the conservation value of retaining some cat predation to  control rodent populations and the spread of avian disease.

Properly funded and well-managed neuter/return programs could also end the ecologically suicidal practice of littering the countryside with Compound 1080,  or fluoroacetate,  a poison banned in most of the world and restricted in the U.S. for 50 years.

New Zealand national obsession

But as BBC News correspondent Henri Astier detailed on June 29,  2023,  killing cats,  rats,  brush possums,  and other mammalian predators has become a national obsession in New Zealand,  a nation which already had one of the world’s highest rates of sport hunting participation.

The national Predator-Free New Zealand campaign aims to protect birds,  Astier explained,  “in an area larger than the United Kingdom.

“At the heart of the project is a unique ecology,”  Astier wrote.  “New Zealand split from an ancient supercontinent 85 million years ago,  long before the ascent of mammals.  Without land predators,  birds could nest on the ground or do without flying.

“Celebrity physicist popularized the dream of a predator-free country”

“Further,  New Zealand was the last major landmass settled by humans.  In the 13th century Polynesians brought mice and Pacific rats.  Six centuries later,  Europeans introduced larger mammals.  Almost a third of native species have been wiped out since human settlement.

“Efforts to save the others,”  Astier continued,  “are not new.  In the 1960s, conservationists managed to clear rats from small offshore islands.  But tackling predators did not become a social phenomenon until about 2010,”  when the introduction of inexpensive infrared wildlife cameras produced widely distributed images of cats,  rats,  brush possums,  and other mammals “pouncing on eggs and chicks.

“In 2011,”  Astier recounted,  “a celebrity physicist,  Sir Paul Callaghan,  popularized the dream of a predator-free country.

“Politicians then got on board”

“Politicians then got on board,”  in a nation where longtime anxiety over Asian immigration easily carried over into anxiety over “alien” animals.

A 2016 law marked rats,  brush possums,  and mustelids,  including stoats, weasels, and ferrets,  for extermination.

“Mid-century was chosen as an inspirational deadline,”   Astier mentioned.

The campaign has claimed some successes.  On the Miramar peninsula,  Astier wrote,  “Rats are now a rarity and many native birds have made a comeback.  The distinctive call of the tui, whose numbers in Wellington had dwindled to just a few pairs in 1990,  is ubiquitous.”

But James Lynch,  the founder of Zealandia,  the first of what are now dozens of large fenced bird sanctuaries in New Zealand,  is among the Predator-Free New Zealand critics.

“Most native birds do not need a predator-free environment”

Summarized Astier,  “Most native birds,  he notes,  do not need a zero-predator environment to thrive.  The few that do,  he argues,  can survive on offshore or urban sanctuaries.  Rather than try to clear the whole country of pests,  Lynch recommends focusing resources on woodland around fenced areas to maximize the survival of birds coming out.”

Most New Zealanders currently appear to accept the argument that if predators can just be exterminated completely,  once and for all,  the trouble and expense of sustained killing campaigns can be avoided forever more––as if no rats,  for instance,  would ever again arrive with cargo and repopulate every accessible habitat niche,  just as rats have repeatedly done at every port around the world despite millennia of rat-hunting and poisoning.

“How could we be so blithe with suffering?”

“Others regard the very idea of a predator-free New Zealand as fanciful,”  Astier acknowledged.  “Conservation researcher Wayne Linklater,”  of Victoria University,  “points out that over the past 150 years, New Zealand has lost every war it has waged on rabbits,  deer and other pests.

“Campaigns to exterminate intelligent,  sentient beings are not just unworkable but ethically misguided,  Linklater adds.”

Concluded Linklater,  speaking for himself as both a longtime critic of the effects of predators on native birds and an opponent of killing campaigns,  “We marshaled enormous resources and people’s passion and we implemented great cruelty.  How could we be so blithe with suffering?”

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