3 days Ago By Nick O'Malley
“Cats are ugly and awful,” writes one man in a submission to what is becoming a deeply contentious parliamentary inquiry into the management of cat populations. “All they do is sneak around in the shadows hissing at night and demand wet food. It’s absolutely terrible that it is unlawful to exterminate cats that can freely exterminate lovely birds.
Exterminate all the brutes.” A NSW parliamentary inquiry into cat containment laws has sparked a controversial debate. Credit: Aresna Villanueva Observers of the NSW parliamentary inquiry say it is introducing a controversy that could have profound implications for cat management around the entire country, a topic that often provokes bitter debate.
The inquiry was called to consider the impact of containment laws, potentially with a view to allowing NSW councils to impose rules mandating cat containment or at least curfews , as is the case in some other states, including Victoria and the ACT. But the inquiry, chaired by the Animal Justice Party’s Emma Hurst, who has referred during hearings to “punitive” cat containment laws , has heard that if cats were forbidden to roam, councils would be forced to impound stray cats, leading to increased euthanasia rates, which cause depression among veterinarians called upon to kill healthy animals. The tone of the inquiry is worrying some experts, who fear it is being used to introduce to Australia a controversial cat control policy championed around the world by cat welfare advocates, known as TNR or TNRC, which stands for Trap, Neuter, Return; or Trap, Neuter, Return and Care.
Under TNR programs, stray cats – or more properly, according to cat advocates, “unhomed” or “community” cats – are trapped. Instead of being euthanised, the cats are desexed and then released, or “returned” to the area in which they were trapped, and then they are fed and cared for by volunteers, ideally with the financial support of donors and taxpayers. TNR programs have exploded in popularity in the US, where they were the subject of an essay published last year in The New Yorker by Jonathan Franzen , the famous novelist and avowed bird lover.
In Franzen’s essay, he quoted sceptics of the policy as saying that TNR programs were often introduced alongside “no kill” policies, which left local governments with full cat shelters and pounds and no tools to deal with the growing nuisance of cat populations. Franzen wrote that in some cases, there were so many “community cats” on waiting lists to be desexed that cat owners were struggling to get appointments to have their own pets desexed. Perhaps most startlingly, he quoted a Pasadena councilwoman as saying that feeding stations for stray cats had attracted the return of coyotes to the area which were then turning on family pets: “[They] come to eat the cat food, stay to eat the cats.
” Cat Protection Society of NSW chief executive Kristina Vesk said that over time, the desexed stray cat population would begin to shrink, while cat lovers would enjoy the benefits of caring for them in the community. Vesk spoke of a pensioner who had told of her joy that cats “chose” her garden to live in once word had spread through “the cat network” that she was friendly. Claim and counterclaim over whether TNR reduces cat numbers mirrors the debate in the US, where advocates say desexing programs will eventually shrink stray cat populations.
Sceptics say cat populations grow so quickly it would be necessary to catch and neuter 70 per cent of any stray population to make a dent in the numbers, an impossible task without vast expenditure. Franzen writes of a cat population that remains in place despite 30 years of TNR. Greens MP Sue Higginson, a member of the inquiry, said: “[TNR] just doesn’t make any sense.
There were times during that hearing that my brain was hurting. On the one hand, they were saying that they would feed cats in the wild, which would artificially increase the carrying capacity of the landscape, and on the other hand, they were saying it would reduce cat numbers.” TNR does not have universal support of animal advocacy groups.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the US opposes it due to the poor health outcomes for stray cats, and the issue has also been raised by the RSPCA in Australia. That the issue is being discussed in Australia is no accident. Britain’s oldest animal rescue centre, the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, is funding an international program to support TNR around the world, including in Australia through the group International Cat Care.
Harry Eckman, the group’s global adviser for cat populations, said it had contacted experts and stakeholders in Australia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Britain as part of a process to “develop strategies and projects”. Eckman said the group’s research showed that “community cat” populations did eventually reduce, and desexing cats avoided the ethical and moral problems with euthanising strays, which, he said, were replaced by other cats when they had been removed and killed. One of those experts contacted by his organisation is one of Australia’s leading experts on the impact of cats on the Australian environment, Australian National University professor Sarah Legge.
Legge said in an interview with this masthead that she finds the proposal bizzare, tone deaf and patronising, especially given the devastating impact of cats on wildlife in Australia. Legge said Australia had the worst record of mammal extinctions on earth, and that cats had caused or contributed to the extinction of 20 species of mammals. Higginson said she was concerned that cat advocates were following in the footsteps of climate deniers by first questioning the science regarding the impact of cats, and then offering “solutions” that would increase the problem.
“They are seeking to elevate the welfare of one species over others,” she said. Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter .
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