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Keeping pet cats indoors would save millions of native animals and billions of dollars. So what's stopping us? (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by trk to c/australia

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Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?

The answer to the question is obviously "yes".

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

thats my point

If house cats were actually some kind of living natural disaster, birds would have driven extinct millenia ago. To solely blame housecats for the mass extinction of songbirds that have existed beside them for hundreds to thousands of years without any appreciable population effect is insane.

Also while DDT has its own host of issues regarding it building up in the food chain, my concern here is the post-DDT ones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What a genius! You solved it!

Here I was thinking there are billions more humans than at any other time in history, many of whom have pet cats.

The increase in house cat numbers is surely unrelated to the increased predation on native wildlife!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

No. I am saying it is not solved and that articles like this are skirting the real problem, which is probably pesticides and herbicides.

The decrease in bird populations of North America is new phenomenon and has only started some time since 1970. Notably, a lot of the songbirds affected are grassland species that dine on insects, seeds and berries, all of which are covered in or have ingested pesticides at farms. And is known, though not well documented, that insect populations are also plummeting but at a much steeper rate that songbirds.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cat numbers go up, native bird numbers go down, you can’t explain that.

Also the article is about Australia. Sorry your American brain can’t handle that concept.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Its a global problem. Its been best studied in North America, so I use those studies.

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