Why don't you support TNR programs?
There are lots of reasons why I don’t support Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) programs in Australia, and neither does our RSPCA.
TNR programs aim to stop a cat population from growing, in the hopes that it will shrink over time as the cats die a ‘natural’ death. Firstly, a ‘stable feral cat population’ isn’t an appropriate goal for most of Australia’s ecosystems, eradication of feral and roaming cats is, as much as that’s harsh to say. Secondly, a ‘natural’ death is without human intervention, and that’s not as pleasant as it sounds, especially in a country full of venomous things and very large birds of prey.
TNR programs can only work, to the degree that they do in the first place, if you couple it with public education about responsible pet ownership and low cost desexing of owned pets. It can never work on its own because the cat population will be continuously topped up from the owned cat population.
Given we have limited resources, we generally put most of those resources towards public education, desexing vouchers for those on low income, and trap and euthanise or shoot feral cats.
Sounds harsh. But our feral cats are often outright dangerous to humans, and if released they continue to eat wildlife. A desexed cat needs to eat less and will occupy territory that a younger, non-desexed cat now can’t have, potentially reducing their reproductive ability which is why some places still do it. But these animals are generally not just housecats that are ‘lost’. They’ve been adapted to our environment for multiple generations and we shouldn’t have any of them, especially with their ability to spread toxoplasma through our wildlife.
In suburban scenarios, for example where we have lots of factories, there are local council incentives for factories and businesses to take ownership of local cats they’d been feeding, whether for company or rodent control. These cats get desexed and microchipped, with the understanding that the business is responsible if it’s sick or injured and needs vet care. They often don’t get much care, but coming in for euthanasia beats dying slowly in a corner somewhere.
For the amount of time, money, professional services and effort we would need to apply to run TNRs successfully, we could better allocate that to targeting the owned cat population and removing the feral cats as much as possible. It’s tempting to think ‘all cats must be saved because they’re cats’ but the scale of the problem is just too big for that sort of one on one solution.
People also like to feed ‘stray’ cats because it makes them feel good inside, even though they never take responsibility for the rest of the cat’s health and welfare. Just giving an animal food is not enough to be caring for it, in my opinion. I find it really quite foreign that TNR seems to be such a big thing in the USA, but I guess you already have native feline predators. We don’t.
‘Feral’ cats in my experience are either semi-adapted wild things which will continue wreaking damage on the environment, or they’re really housecats out of their depth that desperately need a human custodian. It’s not fair in either situation to just release them back to the ‘wild’ to fend for themselves. Either they will do badly and suffer, or they will do well and cause our wildlife to suffer.
So our current solution is just to attempt to remove them from the wild. Rehome what you can, but don’t release anything back.
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