Lethbridge needs to enact a cat bylaw to stop the killing of birds
By Lethbridge Herald on May 1, 2024.
Editor:
We must do something about cats to effectively stop the killing of wild birds. Their numbers are dropping at an alarming rate. Domestic cats in North America killed two billion wild birds in 2023, several of which were in my garden.
I find it ironic that dogs must be licensed, leashed, and picked up after whereas cats run free. In my garden, (a local litter box ) the bird hunting cats face no restrictions.In many cities in Canada, cats must be licensed and kept indoors, or if outdoors, be on a leash.
For those of you who are screaming “No way”, my former neighbour started to travel in a motorhome and found that her two outdoor cats adapted almost immediately to being leashed.
Please Lethbridge city council in the name of Earth Day, write a bylaw for cat ownership that is at least as strict as the one for dogs.
Require licensing, that cats be kept indoors unless on a leash.and a closed area where the cats can enjoy being in the fresh air. This would put an end to roaming to hunt and/or using neighbourhood gardens as litter boxes.
Joan Haig
Lethbridge
9-8
Wow! Just think of all the revenue this could generate for the City coffers!
Is dog licensing a large source of revenue for the city? It doesn’t seem like it is since it all gets used for supporting the animal shelter and the services they offer. They’re not particularly flush with cash. So why would this be different?
10,000+ dogs in the city at $20 – 50 per each. Any new revenue helps with City’s rampant spending.
you said “…in the name of Earth Day” and you find irony in Dog’s leashed and Cats loose. I find irony that windmills kill birds by the thousands, from small to large raptors and thats obviously an “Earth Day thing”, right?.
Jeeeez Dennis, you forgot to mention all the birds dying or being maimed from striking the giant mirror of the Henderson Lake Park forest that the architects designed the new exhibition centre to become, their heads were clearly up their self-centred arses on this one. Sadly sapiens pays very little concern to other species as it plows it way through any given day or project.
Aside: Gotta love the No-Fence-Will-Be-Erected-Yellow-Rope-Fence the Exhibition centre has had to resort to as a method to keep vehicles off the lawn ! Too many architects need to take courses on human nature every other week during their education and careers. They obviously live and work like blind moles in deep caves themselves.
Meanwhile: YES Joan, a cat bylaw that requires cat owners to be every bit as responsible as dog owners is LONG OVERDUE. In the interim … collect their cat droppings if you know the home address of the cat and return to sender’s mailbox. If you have children send them to poop on the cat owner’s lawn ?
DB’s comment made me wonder, so naturally did a goggle search . Found an article published by MIT, a quote from which
“A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects”.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds#
Doesn’t really add to this discussion, just found it interesting.
I found it interesting and helpful. It’s a good response to a snide potshot.
speaking of snide before looking where his quote came from, is you
When looking for quotes, try to stay away from Climate Hugging sites.
I Quote: When the facts above are considered, it becomes clear that existing estimates of the toll of wind energy development on birds are narrowly considered and do not account for the industry’s full impact.
https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/
So you get Climate Huggers suggesting 680,000 and birders saying 28,000,000 I tend to split that into 3,000,000-5,000,000 now go look at fossil fuel fatalty. I stick by the initial statemeny
Forget about inflation and downtown crime.. the cat overpopulation and bird shortage keeps us all up awake at night!
We can only do 1 thing at a time don’tcha know.
Native bird species are a critical part of the weave of our natural environment. Non-native felines are not a necessity for that natural ecosystem to function correctly. Our planet is currently experiencing a massive extinction of species globally, and those species are disappearing at a rate far faster than any previous mass extinction. Given each and every native species has a niche in a region’s ecosystem and fulfill purposes that pretty much assure we self-important-self-absorbed sapiens are able to find and grow food on this planet, I for one think Joan’s worrying about the millions of birds killed in North America each year by domestic cats is definitely a concern we can no longer dismiss lightly. If you are worried about inflation now… the growing impact of climate change and ecosystem collapse on costs of pretty much everything are going to knock your socks off.