Do nature lovers only protect nature if they can get funding? Behind the cute face of Muris the cat hides a killer.
The question often arises as to the priorities used by nature enthusiasts when securing funding for various bird and habitat protection measures. Unfortunately, the impression is that attention is not being paid to real problems, but rather to the most profitable business plan.
A study conducted in the USA found that in that country, domestic and stray cats kill up to 3.7 billion birds per year, while the number of small mammals killed is significantly higher – up to 20.7 billion. The research was conducted by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Researchers estimate that one domestic cat kills up to 34 birds a year, while a stray cat can kill up to 46 birds a year. George H. Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy, has stressed that this should serve as an alarm bell for cat owners and society at large before irreversible damage is done to nature. The data from this study finally show that this is a huge problem, not a harmless new factor for the environment. The changes a cat makes to nature are catastrophic, but they are not seen in everyday life, and no attention is paid to them.
It is interesting that the impact of cats on islands is even greater because birds and small mammals have no way to escape. Cats have been an important factor in the extinction of 33 different bird and amphibian species. It is estimated that cats kill 10% of the US bird population every year.
Although Latvian ornithologists have been invited several times to pay attention to this problem here in Latvia as well, nature enthusiasts consider this issue to be insignificant. Will a cat in Latvia really behave differently than in the USA? Considering that every farmstead has some kind of 'Muris' that can roam freely, the impact of these domesticated small predators could be huge. This is all the more so because the cat is not a natural representative of Latvia's fauna.
So far, there have been no broad studies, no large-scale campaigns calling on cat owners to keep a closer watch on their pets. One solution is to put a collar with a bell on the cat so that when it moves, the bird or small mammal hears the predator approaching. This practice is widely used in Sweden. Furthermore, nature enthusiasts do not warn cat owners about the potentially massive harm their pet causes to Latvian fauna. Instead, nature enthusiasts carry out million-euro projects, making films about eagles, and spend huge resources in attempts to limit and stop economic activity (forestry), which brings in large tax revenues for the state. It seems that nature enthusiasts do not want to ruin their reputation in the eyes of cat owners, because who would believe that dear old Muris is actually a bird killer? Or perhaps the biggest problem is that it is impossible to secure large funding for such a project.