The War on Wildlife Terrorism

i just read an article called "Open Season on Cats in Wisconsin?", and i’m distressed.  i found the link on the left sidebar under Feed Bowl, which shows RSS feeds for cat-related news items.  you can read the article below.

the first time i heard of something like this was in 2003, when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission proposed a policy that would allow the department to trap free-roaming and feral cats on public grounds.  the idea was to protect endangered birds.  although the policy was adopted, the FWC has issued this document to avoid any misunderstanding:  the goal is to protect wildlife, not to eradicate feral cats.

what’s being proposed in Wisconsin, however, is to let hunters shoot feral cats.  although i’m not a hunting advocate, i understand the plausibility of a need for deer hunting, in order to control the population and ecosystem.  however, the people who back this proposal argue that cats are not wildlife and harm said ecosystem.

it’s this same argument that i would use against them:  deer are a part of native wildlife and it’s not uncommon for hunters to eat what they kill.  we are, after all, evolved from hunter-gatherers.  cats are not considered wildlife, so there’s little doubt that a hunter who caught one would eat it.

feral cats may not naturally belong in the areas of Wisconsin where they are supposedly a problem, but regardless, they are wildlife.  they’re wild cats, not domestic cats.  it’s a fine line that can be drawn between domestic and feral cats, but they’re still very different.  i understand that some feral cats may have once been tame, but because they were abandoned or lost, they have reverted back to a wild state.

the opposition for this proposal has set up a Web site at:  http://www.dontshootthecat.com.

at the time the proposal controversy in Florida was going on, i was trying to tame Hee Seop.  he was a feral cat who Brian and i discovered on our back porch one day, eating what the trash that the possum we saw earlier that day, left behind.  (yes, we have possums and raccoons in the City of Chicago.)  Hee Seop has come a long way since then, and yesterday, he climbed in my lap as i sat at the computer.  this issue is very personal to me, but i don’t know what i, personally, can do about it.

Open season on cats in Wisconsin?
 
Proposal would allow hunters to shoot feral felines

Reuters

Updated: 6:10 p.m. ET March 8, 2005

A proposal that would allow hunters in Wisconsin to shoot and kill feral cats is causing, well, a hissy fit.

?It?s entirely cruel behavior to have an open season on cats. Just because a cat doesn?t have a collar doesn?t mean a cat has no owners,? said Jessica Frohman, community outreach and policy coordinator for Alley Cat Allies, a group which espouses no-kill methods of controlling wild felines.

Opposition is coming in ?from all over the country … surprise, shock, horror,? added Adam Bauknecht who along with others has put up a Wisconsin-based Web site calling attention to the issue.

The site ? http://www.dontshootthecat.com ? drew 35,000 hits on Monday alone and has received more than 800 e-mails since it was activated three days ago, Bauknecht told Reuters on Tuesday.

At issue is an advisory question that is among dozens to be aired in public debate next month at wildlife-related meetings in all of Wisconsin?s counties.

The Wisconsin Conservation Congress which conducts the sessions uses them to give advice to state regulators on such weighty matters as changing the date for applying for a bear hunting license to banning electronic decoys in turkey hunting.

An ‘unprotected species’
The cat proposal, simply put, would reclassify free roaming, domestic feral cats as an ?unprotected species? that could then be shot by anyone with a license to hunt small game. The rationale is that wild cats prey on songbirds in disproportionate numbers.

Not so, says Frohman of the Maryland-based Alley Cat group. Man is a far worse predator, she said, with skyscrapers and other man-made structures killing countless migrating wild birds in collisions each
year.

The true solution to the country?s millions of feral city and country cats, she said, is to trap them, have them spayed or neutered and then released back into the wild. Killing them, she said, only causes
colonies of existing cats to expand in size to take up the territory of those that have been eliminated.

Bauknecht, who works at MadCat Pet Supplies in Madison, Wis., said the chances are very slim that the cat proposal would ever be adopted by the state?s Department of Natural Resources, even if it gets backing from citizens attending the meetings in April.

?But we?re not taking any chances,? he said.?When this is resolved we?re going to pursue trying to build a statewide network for cat spaying trap-and-releases. We want to use this as a jumping off point.

The cat hunting proposal had its origin with Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wis., who could not be reached for comment. He said in an interview published in the La Crosse Tribune recently that he was not anti-feline but ?If you open the door and kick your cat out at night you?ve changed its status.?

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7130397/
accessed 3/8/05