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IPFS News Link • Environment

Free-Roaming Cats Could Be An Environmental Menace

• arclein

Indeed, cats have spread from their humble beginnings in the Fertile Crescent to just about everywhere. They're on every continent except Antarctica. There's almost no place where cats are not at home, and therefore no place where small wildlife is safe from them. The Moral Cost of Cats One study estimates that in the U.S. alone, free-ranging cats (mostly feral cats, but also strays) kill more than a billion ?" and maybe as many as four billion ?" birds every year. But those numbers may be misleading. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) argues that cats aren't a significant threat to birds (and remember, these folks are some serious bird lovers). They point out that many millions of birds die each year for all kinds of reasons, including starvation. And cats tend to prey on weak birds that probably would have died anyway.


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