Cats have been domestic pets in the UK since at least the times of Roman civilisation, and have been allowed to roam free for much of that time. It's odd to me that there's such a contrast between attitudes towards cats roaming in Europe (which I would say is completely the norm, particularly in e.g. the UK) and the United States (and now Australia), though perhaps this is just down to different native fauna.
The EU’s executive said Thursday that it is “a strong defender of free movement rights — including of cats” and “categorically” denied it would ever force cats to be kept indoors or on a leash, as one scientific study suggests.
The RSPB themselves have said:
“While we know that cats do kill large numbers of birds in UK gardens, there’s no evidence this is affecting decline in the same way that these other issues are” (habitat/food loss from climate change)
we (4) compared the condition of those birds killed by cats versus those killed in collisions, e.g. window strikes. Mean (± sd) cat density was 348 ± 86 cats/km2 (n = 10 sites); considering the eight species most commonly taken by cats, the mean ratios of adult birds/cats and juvenile birds/cats across the five sites were 1.17 ± 0.23 and 3.07 ± 0.74, respectively
Across species, cat-killed birds were in significantly poorer condition than those killed following collisions; this is consistent with the notion that cat predation represents a compensatory rather than additive form of mortality.
I feel like the attitude towards outdoor cats online in the United States is a lot different than the attitude in regular life, at least where I live in California.
There are a ton of cats that wander outside in our neighborhood, and I have never heard a single person say anything about it. Online, you get flamed if you even hint at your cat being outside.
I have the suspicion the amount of cats in the local ecosystem right now is lower in than it was before humans.
If you look at Natura 2000 reporting[1], the more dense and wealthier the region is, the less wild cats there are. For example, Romania which has roughly 2/3 of the territory of Germany also has twice as many F. silvestris. In the worst case, the wild cat is basically non-existent in the United Kingdom.
I've never seen a study on the matter, but I doubt there are enough feral F. catus to compensate for the loss, notwithstanding the eastern Mediterranean.
I think you seriously underestimate the proportion of domesticated animals in the overall ecosystem. Because humans have grown to numbers that are much much larger than any other mamal of comparable size (largely due to industrialised food production), numbers of our domesticated animals are also much larger than what would be sustained in a normal ecosystem.
This is not a big deal in the United States as far as I'm aware. At least, nowhere I've ever lived (9 states so far) had anything like a cat curfew. Animal control mostly ignores them and focuses on dogs. If nothing else, Australia's ecosystems are inherently more fragile than those of the Americas and Eurasia just because of the relative isolation. Americas are also relatively more isolated and fragile than Eurasia (big part of why natives were easy to conquer - no horses and very little disease resistance), but not as much as Australia.
That said, even though introduction of cats everywhere but Eurasia was also human action, the contribution of domestic cats to wildlife endangerment is minuscule next to everything else humans do. Habitat loss from cities, monoculture farming, and building roads everywhere does way more destruction than cats can ever do. Cats are arguably even critical to urban rodent control, which is probably why we started keeping them as pets in the first place (aside from being so damn cute). Feeding off our stray trash would put rats and racoons and what not totally out of control if nothing was preying on them.
By the time the European colonies on the east side of North America had established themselves and sorted out things like independence and were ready to start expanding west around 95% of the Native population to the west had died off due to pandemics of non-native diseases.
The Native tribes had had extensive trade networks that spanned the continent, which unfortunately for them inadvertently also spread those non-native diseases and so the massive die off reached nearly everywhere--even places that European explorers has never come anywhere near.
I don't see how it removes agency from Native Americans to note that after suffering what was in effect nearly an extinction level event it was not hard for European invaders to conquer the survivors.
The RSPB themselves have said.....there’s no evidence this is affecting decline
The RSPB know which side their bread is buttered. They are a charity who get their donations from "animal lovers", inducing cat 'owners'. They certainly won't say anything which might prejudice this source of income.
It's odd to me that there's such a contrast between attitudes towards cats roaming in Europe
Plenty of people here in Blighty despise roaming cats leaving turds in their gardens and killing the local wildlife.
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Cats have been domestic pets in the UK since at least the times of Roman civilisation, and have been allowed to roam free for much of that time. It's odd to me that there's such a contrast between attitudes towards cats roaming in Europe (which I would say is completely the norm, particularly in e.g. the UK) and the United States (and now Australia), though perhaps this is just down to different native fauna.
The RSPB themselves have said:
“While we know that cats do kill large numbers of birds in UK gardens, there’s no evidence this is affecting decline in the same way that these other issues are” (habitat/food loss from climate change)
Research in the UK has suggested cats are mostly preying on the "doomed surplus": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1474-919X....
I feel like the attitude towards outdoor cats online in the United States is a lot different than the attitude in regular life, at least where I live in California.
There are a ton of cats that wander outside in our neighborhood, and I have never heard a single person say anything about it. Online, you get flamed if you even hint at your cat being outside.
I'm guessing all the really vulnerable (to cats) bird species in europe went extinct long ago already.
This is it. Europe itself is domesticated and there's very little wild left here. Other places, less so.
There was a _slight_ increase in population (and thereby cats) since Roman times...
I have the suspicion the amount of cats in the local ecosystem right now is lower in than it was before humans.
If you look at Natura 2000 reporting[1], the more dense and wealthier the region is, the less wild cats there are. For example, Romania which has roughly 2/3 of the territory of Germany also has twice as many F. silvestris. In the worst case, the wild cat is basically non-existent in the United Kingdom.
I've never seen a study on the matter, but I doubt there are enough feral F. catus to compensate for the loss, notwithstanding the eastern Mediterranean.
[1] https://nature-art17.eionet.europa.eu/article17/species/repo...
I think you seriously underestimate the proportion of domesticated animals in the overall ecosystem. Because humans have grown to numbers that are much much larger than any other mamal of comparable size (largely due to industrialised food production), numbers of our domesticated animals are also much larger than what would be sustained in a normal ecosystem.
Here is an illustration of this https://xkcd.com/1338/
This is not a big deal in the United States as far as I'm aware. At least, nowhere I've ever lived (9 states so far) had anything like a cat curfew. Animal control mostly ignores them and focuses on dogs. If nothing else, Australia's ecosystems are inherently more fragile than those of the Americas and Eurasia just because of the relative isolation. Americas are also relatively more isolated and fragile than Eurasia (big part of why natives were easy to conquer - no horses and very little disease resistance), but not as much as Australia.
That said, even though introduction of cats everywhere but Eurasia was also human action, the contribution of domestic cats to wildlife endangerment is minuscule next to everything else humans do. Habitat loss from cities, monoculture farming, and building roads everywhere does way more destruction than cats can ever do. Cats are arguably even critical to urban rodent control, which is probably why we started keeping them as pets in the first place (aside from being so damn cute). Feeding off our stray trash would put rats and racoons and what not totally out of control if nothing was preying on them.
From what I read, this is an oversimplification to the point where it removes agency from Native Americans and make the whole topic inherently biased.
By the time the European colonies on the east side of North America had established themselves and sorted out things like independence and were ready to start expanding west around 95% of the Native population to the west had died off due to pandemics of non-native diseases.
The Native tribes had had extensive trade networks that spanned the continent, which unfortunately for them inadvertently also spread those non-native diseases and so the massive die off reached nearly everywhere--even places that European explorers has never come anywhere near.
I don't see how it removes agency from Native Americans to note that after suffering what was in effect nearly an extinction level event it was not hard for European invaders to conquer the survivors.
The RSPB know which side their bread is buttered. They are a charity who get their donations from "animal lovers", inducing cat 'owners'. They certainly won't say anything which might prejudice this source of income.
Plenty of people here in Blighty despise roaming cats leaving turds in their gardens and killing the local wildlife.