| that they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangenti You like to eat, yes? Because I assure you, without cats, or something to replace them that does what cats do, you and I will starve to death. Farmers don't have cats because they're cute. 3They have them to stop rodents from eating silo, seeds, fields bare. What do you plan to do? Spray death chemicals all over the place, as a replacement? And no, trapping won't work. It never kills enough, and there are never enough traps. Honestly, I sincerely doubt cats are the issue. Cats do very poorly away from human settlements, and therefore there's loads of area without cat habitat. In Canada, most of the land is cat free, there is so much land without cats, it would be impossible for them to wipe out a noticeable percentage of birds. There's no way they're the problem, as a result of this, when we're talking about 1/3 of the birds. A far better explanation is insect population collapse. Missing food. |
You could have made the same argument about DDT. You have to acknowledge the problem before you can find a different solution.
With enough determination it’s quite feasible. You know as a Canadian that Alberta is the only place in the Americas without rats. They have a very successful management program. [1]
Cats are an invasive species, so are rats. Alternatives exist, please stop being so defensive. Given this topical counterexample it hardly seems like a case of “cats vs food and hentavirus” since Alberta has no rats, plenty of food and no hentavirus without relying on cats.
> There's no way they're the problem, as a result of this, when we're talking about 1/3 of the birds.
… they kill 10% of birds per year. Times 3 years is just about 1/3. Given it occurred over 50 years I’d say we’ve got us a good candidate. Especially since there is documented evidence of them leading to the extinction of entire species. You can see how the math here is within the ballpark yeah?
[1] https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...