Editor:
Re: “Gibsons councillors sympathetic to appeal for cat bylaw” (Jan. 29), and “Cats and other threats to birds,” Good Birding (Jan. 22).
Who knew? As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, millions upon millions of birds are being massacred every year – not by hunters, not by wind turbines, not by kids in baggy clothes using slingshots, but by a familiar, furry creature that may be innocently purring on your lap as you read this.
Yes, according to some members of Gibsons’ town council and Tony Greenfield of the “Good Birding” column in the Coast Reporter, Fluffy the cat is the prime cause of an ongoing bird apocalypse. Mr. Greenfield quotes claims by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature that “one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species” is the domestic cat. Hmmm, so which planet did these terrible pussycats invade from then? How convenient and safe to point the finger of blame at one of our four-footed friends incapable of speech.
If puss could speak she might point out that there are a lot of other animals currently in great difficulty in addition to birds, including (according to the journal Biological Conservation) 40 per cent of insect species which are in precipitous decline, over 450 species of fish that are on the endangered list, 80 mammal species that are going extinct, and 196 reptile species that are considered critically endangered. Are cats to blame for all of this, or is it the raccoons?
If birds really are disappearing faster than in the past they are doing so because of habitat destruction, pesticides, climate change, urbanization, etc. Yes, roaming cats have always accounted for a percentage of bird loss, and yes, cats do better and live longer when kept indoors, but cat predation has not changed significantly over the years, while humankind’s deleterious effect on the environment has.
The current great age of extinction is known as the Anthropocene not the Felinopocene. There is only one incorrigibly destructive invasive species on this earth today and it walks on two feet and god knows what planet we came from.
Joseph Davis, Gibsons
