Not to mention that the cats who aren't too lazy to chase things are far more likely to go for ground-based animals like rats and mice than birds. As in, the rats that would be raiding bird nests if the cats didn't keep their numbers down.
Cats also routinely go into other peoples houses and either get themselves stuck or hunt rats/mice there, also something that humans generally are not allowed to do.
Isn't putting them on a leash, or having them wear a bell around their neck outside, enough for all parties?
I would also say they would at least need to be neutered in that case so they dont reproduce with the feral population, but from a predatory perspective that would probably be fine then.
I would still not let our cats go out, my wife is pregnant so toxoplasmosis is very scary and bell or not we would be terrified of them getting lost or getting run over by a car or worse.
This is US only. I wonder what the numbers would be world wide.
They don't have the opportunity to kill birds or other animals.
On the other hand, cats reducing rodent populations sounds like a very good thing. If only we could get them to ignore species we want to keep around...
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-29/feral-cat-management-...
Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.
I.e. cats might kill more birds and mammals than humans.
Humanity has a cost on nature, that should be mitigated.
Humans like domestic cats, which is one contributor to the overall human-induced reduction in biodiversity.
I wonder also whether there's something about towns/cities that makes birds flourish, compared to other wild animals.
Well yeah obviously. Cats kill relatively few humans, they're too little
They're counting cat-caused as anthropogenic i.e. part of anthropos-caused aka human-caused. And "single largest group" could be 1% if there are a lot of groups and each happens to be smaller than 1%.
In the US, I went to a university (sarcastically referred to as find another university) where the mascot was the burrowing owl. They build nests in the sandy soil in Southern Florida. They are becoming endangered due to feral cats hunting them. And there is always some battle between preservationists and crazy cat lovers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrowing_owl
Cats have a hunting instinct. No matter how well fed, they will continue to hunt. I remember living with a woman who rescued ex-breeder cats, which were all very fat. They still tried hunting lizards even being so fat that their belly hair rubbed off on the carpeting. Cats are not quite as bad as adult raccoons (who will kill every chicken in your coop just to eat one), but are not capable of hunting only what they need to eat.
The linked article says 90% of the mortality is caused by un-owned cats. I'd imagine that feral cats just replace wild cats in Europe, and thus do exist in the ecosystem with negative feedback (if they are not fed). Not sure about North America, as there is not really a small wild cat species I think?
1 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00063657.2021.1...
Asking us to prove that cats killing wildlife is a bad thing.
A guy once told me that they remove the fallen logs from the Canadian forests because fallen trees are messy and ruin the forest. How do you even respond to such a stupid concept?
Their predators are more scared of humans, enough to avoid urban areas. Most suburbs are kept in unnatural states with lawns and inedible plants, giving the predators no place to live. Some birds are capable of learning which humans are "safe" and which should be avoided.
I would assume it has got do with the reason pigeons are sometimes called "flying rats", i.e. they can subsist on human trash, can survive in the environment and are not seen as negatively as rats and thus have less pest-control efforts pointed at them.
(Genuine Q. I don't know anything about what biodiversity folk look for.)
Humans are very good at introducing invasive species (domestic cat, kudzu) and pretty bad at forseeing the impact they have