Longcore's Urban Wildlands lawsuit win is beginning to have a chilling impact: Vets are no longer accepting City S/N vouchers if they are marked feral. These certificates are useless. Fewer and fewer cats are being spay/neutered now because of Longcore's lawsuit.
This means that maybe 15-20,000 ferals that would have been "fixed" are not going to be this years, which means bumper crops of feral kittens this year and next until the city gets off its lazy ass and does a CEQA study on TNR.
For the first time we will be able to see the effectiveness of the City's prior TNR practices versus its legal shut out of TNR now because of Travis Longcore. I suspect we will see at least another 2,000 ADDITIONAL kittens being killed in the shelters and at least another 1,000 adult cats, and at the same time, a massive increase in live ferals on the streets due to Lonhcore's poorly thought out lawsuit and its unintended consequences.
The again, maybe this is what he wanted: the problem to become so big that the City has to step in and start killing ferals at a massively increased rate.
All of this is laid at the doorstep of Travis Longcore and Urban Wildlands Group. Look them up on google and tell them what you think.
The feral coupons are no longer accepted. The Department is printing out more coupons for owned cats. The same total number of cats will be neutered. Plus, a vet can accept an owned cat coupon and then neuter a feral cat. Who's to say it's not just scared. Nothing will change.
ReplyDeleteWhen Boks was running the show he actually did cause more cats to die. He refused feral cats and kittens telling people to TNR. The people just dumped the unneutered animals on the street and they multiplied. That's why cat intake and death went up.
Absolutely! Travis Longcore and Urban Wildlands Group aren’t the only ones to blame, of course—don’t forget the American Bird Conservancy, LA Audubon Society, and others. But if Longcore is taking most of the heat, it’s well deserved.
ReplyDeleteHis essay in Conservation Biology last year—which, not surprisingly, is now posted all over the Web—is more or a marketing/PR piece than science article. Sadly, the media (including NPR and the LA Times) have taken Longcore at his word, blissfully ignoring the glaring omissions, contradictions, and bias in his article.
I think you’re exactly right: the current increase in euthanasia (which will only get worse) is exactly what Longcore and the others wanted. And, eventually, a population explosion that will—once an area’s carrying capacity is reached—require Mother Nature to “intervene” via disease, starvation, etc.
I think their “environmental concerns” were simply used as a legal tactic. I can’t imagine Los Angeles has the money to do an impact study—something Longcore surely knows. No, this case had little to do with the environment or wildlife at all.
This is one reason I started my blog, voxfelina.com—to untangle some of the problematic “science” surrounding the feral cat/TNR debate. And Longcore’s paper was among the first items on my to-do list!
Peter
www.voxfelina.com