Wild cats in the news

I see today’s Star Tribune (wed.3/16/05) there is a good article about feral cats in Mn. It is already legal to shoot wild cats in MN. Its good to know that Mn.DNR is on top with this one.

Last update: March 16, 2005 at 6:51 AM
Cat’s in the bag?
Doug Smith, Star Tribune

A Wisconsin proposal to declare wild or feral cats an unprotected species — allowing them to be shot on sight — has sparked, well, a cat fight.
Cat lovers around the nation howled in outrage, the man who made the proposal received death threats, and some Minnesota letter writers asked how Wisconsin could be so cruel to even consider such a thing.
They might be surprised to learn wild cats are fair game in Minnesota, and have been for years.
“A wild or feral cat is an unprotected species in Minnesota,” said Mark Holsten, Department of Natural Resources deputy commissioner. They can be shot or trapped or otherwise killed as a nuisance animal, like gophers, skunks or weasels, Holsten said.
“If you have feral cats on your property, you can shoot them. They’re [like] a gopher or a woodchuck,” Holsten said.
That’s not news to some rural Minnesota residents.
“We have been killing stray-wild cats for years, but apparently are not doing our job well enough,” Charles Wolf of Long Prairie wrote recently to the Star Tribune. “There are still way too many of them.”
Said Roger Strand of New London: “We live in the woods and have feral cats that ambush songbirds at my feeders. I shoot them when I can.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s open season on all cats. We’re talking wild or feral cats — cats that essentially live on their own with little or no human contact.
“If you know that’s your neighbor’s cat, it’s a different story,” Holsten said. “I would hope the neighbor would be smart enough to put a collar on it so it could be identified.”
Cats — whether wild or not — can’t be shot in suburbs, cities or towns because of local shooting ordinances. And state law prohibits shooting within 500 feet of a residence or livestock.
There are other restrictions to killing unprotected animals like feral cats. A person can’t use artificial lights, run them over with vehicles or generally use poison to kill them.
The reason feral cats are scorned by some wildlife officials, hunters, bird watchers and others is because they prey on wildlife, including songbirds and game birds such as pheasants and ducks.
And the toll appears high. Wisconsin researcher Stanley Temple, using radio-collared cats, estimates free-ranging cats in Wisconsin might kill between 8 million and 217 million songbirds yearly and 140,000 game birds. A “reasonable estimate” would be 39 million birds, he has said.
“Multiply even the bottom estimate by 50 states and that’s about a million birds a day killed by house cats,” said Bob Zink, ornithologist at the University of Minnesota. “It’s a major source of mortality.”
Said Zink: “I’m a hunter and a cat lover. But my cat never went outside to kill birds, and I had her 18 years. People shouldn’t let their cats outside.”
That’s why Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wis., proposed that free-roaming feral cats be considered an unprotected species, as they are in Minnesota. He saw the cat tracks in the snow beneath his bird feeder. He has said he’s not a cat hater but believes they don’t belong in the environment.
“I look at them as an invasive species, plain and simple,” he told the Associated Press.
Zink, who also is curator of birds at the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, agrees.
“Our birds didn’t evolve in an ecosystem with a feline predator of that size and ability,” he said. “It’s an exotic species we’ve introduced, like zebra mussels. They do environmental damage to the native ecosystem.”
Minnesota officials don’t know how many wild cats are on the landscape, or their impact here on songbirds or game birds. But drive almost any rural Minnesota highway and you’ll see feral cats.
“It’s pretty common to see free-roaming cats in road ditches hunting,” said Ken Varland, DNR regional wildlife manager in southern Minnesota. “There’s an awful lot of them out there.”
Said Pam Perry, a DNR nongame specialist in Brainerd: “This is really a serious problem. I don’t think people realize how serious it is. Cats are such efficient predators. This is a house pet that, if it gets loose, can establish its own wild populations.”
A colony of about 60 feral cats was found last year on a former dairy farm near Oronoco, Minn., and similar colonies have been reported elsewhere, including the Twin Cities.
There is a simple, non-lethal option. Perry and the DNR endorses the American Bird Conservancy’s national “keep your cat indoors” program.
“Just keep them indoors,” she suggested.
The Oronoco cats were trapped, sterilized, vaccinated and released — as an alternative to killing them. A group called Camp Companion did the work. It sterilized and released 230 feral cats last year.
The same method has been used elsewhere around the country. The theory is that, once the cats are sterilized, the colonies eventually will die off because they can’t reproduce.
Zink doesn’t think much of the idea.
“It’s unconscionable that people are doing this. They think they are doing the cats a big favor, but they’re not doing the environment a favor.” The wild cats will continue to prey on wildlife, he said.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin proposal will be considered at Wisconsin Conservation Congress spring meetings around the state at 7 p.m. April 11. And the idea continues to generate hisses.
The Humane Society of the United States last week called the proposal “archaic and unwarranted.”
Doug Smith is at [email protected].

Last update: March 16, 2005 at 6:51 AM
Cat’s in the bag?
Doug Smith, Star Tribune

A Wisconsin proposal to declare wild or feral cats an unprotected species — allowing them to be shot on sight — has sparked, well, a cat fight.
Cat lovers around the nation howled in outrage, the man who made the proposal received death threats, and some Minnesota letter writers asked how Wisconsin could be so cruel to even consider such a thing.
They might be surprised to learn wild cats are fair game in Minnesota, and have been for years.
“A wild or feral cat is an unprotected species in Minnesota,” said Mark Holsten, Department of Natural Resources deputy commissioner. They can be shot or trapped or otherwise killed as a nuisance animal, like gophers, skunks or weasels, Holsten said.
“If you have feral cats on your property, you can shoot them. They’re [like] a gopher or a woodchuck,” Holsten said.
That’s not news to some rural Minnesota residents.
“We have been killing stray-wild cats for years, but apparently are not doing our job well enough,” Charles Wolf of Long Prairie wrote recently to the Star Tribune. “There are still way too many of them.”
Said Roger Strand of New London: “We live in the woods and have feral cats that ambush songbirds at my feeders. I shoot them when I can.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s open season on all cats. We’re talking wild or feral cats — cats that essentially live on their own with little or no human contact.
“If you know that’s your neighbor’s cat, it’s a different story,” Holsten said. “I would hope the neighbor would be smart enough to put a collar on it so it could be identified.”
Cats — whether wild or not — can’t be shot in suburbs, cities or towns because of local shooting ordinances. And state law prohibits shooting within 500 feet of a residence or livestock.
There are other restrictions to killing unprotected animals like feral cats. A person can’t use artificial lights, run them over with vehicles or generally use poison to kill them.
The reason feral cats are scorned by some wildlife officials, hunters, bird watchers and others is because they prey on wildlife, including songbirds and game birds such as pheasants and ducks.
And the toll appears high. Wisconsin researcher Stanley Temple, using radio-collared cats, estimates free-ranging cats in Wisconsin might kill between 8 million and 217 million songbirds yearly and 140,000 game birds. A “reasonable estimate” would be 39 million birds, he has said.
“Multiply even the bottom estimate by 50 states and that’s about a million birds a day killed by house cats,” said Bob Zink, ornithologist at the University of Minnesota. “It’s a major source of mortality.”
Said Zink: “I’m a hunter and a cat lover. But my cat never went outside to kill birds, and I had her 18 years. People shouldn’t let their cats outside.”
That’s why Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wis., proposed that free-roaming feral cats be considered an unprotected species, as they are in Minnesota. He saw the cat tracks in the snow beneath his bird feeder. He has said he’s not a cat hater but believes they don’t belong in the environment.
“I look at them as an invasive species, plain and simple,” he told the Associated Press.
Zink, who also is curator of birds at the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, agrees.
“Our birds didn’t evolve in an ecosystem with a feline predator of that size and ability,” he said. “It’s an exotic species we’ve introduced, like zebra mussels. They do environmental damage to the native ecosystem.”
Minnesota officials don’t know how many wild cats are on the landscape, or their impact here on songbirds or game birds. But drive almost any rural Minnesota highway and you’ll see feral cats.
“It’s pretty common to see free-roaming cats in road ditches hunting,” said Ken Varland, DNR regional wildlife manager in southern Minnesota. “There’s an awful lot of them out there.”
Said Pam Perry, a DNR nongame specialist in Brainerd: “This is really a serious problem. I don’t think people realize how serious it is. Cats are such efficient predators. This is a house pet that, if it gets loose, can establish its own wild populations.”
A colony of about 60 feral cats was found last year on a former dairy farm near Oronoco, Minn., and similar colonies have been reported elsewhere, including the Twin Cities.
There is a simple, non-lethal option. Perry and the DNR endorses the American Bird Conservancy’s national “keep your cat indoors” program.
“Just keep them indoors,” she suggested.
The Oronoco cats were trapped, sterilized, vaccinated and released — as an alternative to killing them. A group called Camp Companion did the work. It sterilized and released 230 feral cats last year.
The same method has been used elsewhere around the country. The theory is that, once the cats are sterilized, the colonies eventually will die off because they can’t reproduce.
Zink doesn’t think much of the idea.
“It’s unconscionable that people are doing this. They think they are doing the cats a big favor, but they’re not doing the environment a favor.” The wild cats will continue to prey on wildlife, he said.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin proposal will be considered at Wisconsin Conservation Congress spring meetings around the state at 7 p.m. April 11. And the idea continues to generate hisses.
The Humane Society of the United States last week called the proposal “archaic and unwarranted.”
Doug Smith is at [email protected].

“Pull”, “meow”, bang.

“Pull”, “meow”, bang.

“Pull”, “meow”, bang

“Pull”, “meow”, bang

The article stated ‘can’t run them over with vehicles’.
You’re kidding me! You mean if you hit one going down the hiway you just broke the law? Did I miss something here?
Ya know, the money they spent trapping and sterilizing could have bought a lot of food for the shelters, or a lot of bullets.

The article stated ‘can’t run them over with vehicles’.
You’re kidding me! You mean if you hit one going down the hiway you just broke the law? Did I miss something here?
Ya know, the money they spent trapping and sterilizing could have bought a lot of food for the shelters, or a lot of bullets.

Great Game

Great Game

I just read an article on Yahoo news that stated that Wisconsin’s Governor has said he will not sign the feral cat hunting legislation into law even though it passed the Conservation Congress. The way the article was written it made it sound as if the governor was giving into the animal rights groups. The article went so far as to say the governor is not a hunter. I don’t really have a stand on cat hunting. I’ve never shot a cat and I have had several cats for pets over the years but I have also seen large groups of wild cats with mange and who knows what else.

I know that governors have the right to veto legislation but who should the governor be listening to in this case? The DNR and the Wisconsin Conservation Congress of his own state or PETA and other animal rights groups from outside the state? Something similar happened here in Iowa a couple years ago with dove hunting. The Iowa DNR had fought for years to get a season on doves. Every year it would get shot down in the legislature. Finally they got it past the legislature and on to the Governor who vetoed the bill.

Eyehunter

I just read an article on Yahoo news that stated that Wisconsin’s Governor has said he will not sign the feral cat hunting legislation into law even though it passed the Conservation Congress. The way the article was written it made it sound as if the governor was giving into the animal rights groups. The article went so far as to say the governor is not a hunter. I don’t really have a stand on cat hunting. I’ve never shot a cat and I have had several cats for pets over the years but I have also seen large groups of wild cats with mange and who knows what else.

I know that governors have the right to veto legislation but who should the governor be listening to in this case? The DNR and the Wisconsin Conservation Congress of his own state or PETA and other animal rights groups from outside the state? Something similar happened here in Iowa a couple years ago with dove hunting. The Iowa DNR had fought for years to get a season on doves. Every year it would get shot down in the legislature. Finally they got it past the legislature and on to the Governor who vetoed the bill.

Eyehunter