March 18, 2005

• Kill the Cats

  Wisconsin
  is considering allowing the hunting of cats. Not cougars or mountain
  lions or tigers on the loose but putty-tats: Sylvester the cat. Morris
  the cat. Garfield.
       
  The aim is to prevent the mass killing of birds by cats, mostly of the
  feral — i.e., wild — variety. In other words, some people want to give
  granny a shotgun so she can kill Sylvester before he gets Tweety Bird.

  I'm more of a dog guy, but I like cats. Nonetheless, a cat massacre makes more sense than you might think.

  Let's start with the big picture. If you know anything about American
  environmentalism, you know that Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring,
  is a secular saint. Time magazine named her one of the "100 People of
  the Century." In 1992 a highfalutin panel of distinguished experts
  named Silent Spring as the most influential book of the last
  half-century. "More than any other (book), it changed the way
  Americans, and people around the world, looked at the reckless way we
  live on this planet," writes Philip Shabecoff in A Fierce Green Fire,
  his history of U.S. environmentalism.

  As the name suggests, the thesis of Silent Spring was that the birds
  were dying from the ravages of DDT and other pesticides. The chemical
  was found to thin the eggshells of some species of birds, most notably
  eagles and falcons — which, a pedant might add, are not particularly
  known for their contributions to melodious springs.

  Carson's science was deeply flawed, partly because we've learned a lot
  more since then and partly because she was interested in scoring
  ideological points. She asserted, for example, that DDT was a
  carcinogen in humans, which isn't true. For a thorough debunking of the
  Rachel Carson myth, see Ronald Bailey's "Silent Spring at 40" in the
  June 2002 issue of Reason.

  Anyway, while Carson's cancer scare was a big deal, the part of the
  book which has kept Silent Spring on the shelves is the bit about how
  spring would no longer bring a symphony of songbirds.

  Well, the inconvenient truth is that cats kill more American birds, particularly songbirds, than DDT and pesticides ever did.

  Wisconsin is considering allowing residents to shoot feral cats in part
  because a respected study found that felines kill between 7.8 million
  and 217 million birds in Wisconsin alone. Data from a Michigan study
  suggest that some 75 million birds are killed there just in the summer
  alone.

  Estimates for how many birds cats kill in the United States vary almost
  as widely. The lowest estimates are around 100 million and go up to the
  2.5 billion, though the consensus seems to hover around half a billion.
  What this leaves out, of course, is that many vulnerable bird species
  are particularly threatened by cats (and, alas, sometimes dogs as
  well), a non-native predator that often kills small animals for the fun
  of it.

  Cat defenders say that this is all bogus. If cats didn't slaughter the
  birds, natural predators would. Maybe, but they are, uh, natural
  predators, and nature's a big deal for environmentalists, right? Or
  have I been reading the wrong magazines? They also claim that losing
  habitat to development is a bigger threat than cats. OK, but even if
  that were true in some places, why should that get cats off the hook?

  This raises an important insight into what is really going on here. The
  objection to DDT and pesticides has a great deal to do with the fear of
  technology and material "progress." For example, Carson's memory is
  still invoked regularly by the anti-pesticide movement today.
  Anti-pesticide activists claim that some 67 million birds die every
  year from such chemicals. In other words, compounds that make food
  cheaper and more abundant for everybody kill between 10 and 20 percent
  of the number of birds killed by cats every year. And yet,
  environmentalists are terrified of making cats a major issue, because
  it will split the movement. An official at the World Wildlife Fund
  calls the cat issue a "third rail" for environmentalists.

  Whether DDT was as bad for birds as Carson and her heirs claim is still
  the subject of great controversy. What is not controversial is that the
  bans and regulations Carson's work implemented came with real costs. In
  the Third World, malaria continues to kill millions because
  Carson-induced DDT phobia. The bias against pesticides produces lower
  food yields with no proven benefits for human health.

  Meanwhile, the contribution of feral cats is 100-percent aesthetic. We
  like kitties. This raises an outrageous double standard. Dogs — our
  closest allies in the animal kingdom — can be shot for harassing
  wildlife or livestock. But free-loading cats are protected when they
  massacre birds for sport. Where's the justice?

  This isn't to say that there aren't other important reasons why spring
  is becoming more silent. But the loss of habitat, pesticides, and the
  advent of wind power all bring significant social benefits. While
  tolerance for the multitude of feral, often diseased, wild cats is
  pure, spoiled self-indulgence.

  — (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services

  • 2:55 pm
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