I am more disappointed in DU than I have ever been!

[BikeWriter]

I found the following post in the Lounge in archives. One answer only:

Feral cats, endangered birds each have defenders

BY PATRICK WHITTLE, Newsday.com

Every spring, as birds flock back to Long Island in droves, Eileen Schwinn wonders whether this will be the season the cats get the last remaining pair of piping plover at Mount Sinai's Cedar Beach.

Schwinn, president of the Eastern Long Island Audubon Society, is racked with emotion over what she says is a "dramatic decrease" in species such as plover, bobwhites and ovenbirds threatened by the claws of stray cats.

But Cedar Beach's 30 or so feral cats have a powerful ally in a smorgasbord of animal rights groups, some of whom say Long Island's strays - estimated to be in the tens of thousands Islandwide, according to one rescue group - have as much right to the beach as birds.

The controversy in Mount Sinai reflects a battle playing out from Atlantic Beach in western Nassau County to Sammy's Beach on the South Fork - birders and cat lovers at loggerheads over what to do about feral cats believed to be preying on bird species as common as the tern and as rare as the ground-nesting piping plover.

Feral cats, endangered birds each have defenders

[kestrel91316]

1. As a cat vet who actually cares about the well-being of her patients,

I think domestic cats should be INDOOR pets (though there is a valid argument to be made for rural barn cats to keep rodents out of livestock feed). I am also occasionally a birder, and am appalled that an imported non-native species like our cat is allowed to decimate wildlife populations. Humans can be SO irresponsible sometimes.

I tell my clients we have enough trouble with diseases we can't prevent. We need to keep cats indoors so we don't have the added burden of illness and injury that is totally preventable. And the birds need more than a little help, too.

[tigereye]

2. there are tons of feral cats, but very few birds of endangered species left

I'd vote for the birds.