Audubon Society Official Encourages Poisoning Stray Cats With Tylenol. Sign This Petition:

[pnwmom]

35. Here's a summary of some research:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/magazine/02cats-v--birds-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In the past decade, at least a dozen studies published in top scientific journals like Biological Conservation, Journal of Zoology and Mammal Review have chronicled the problem of cat predation of small mammals and birds. The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas. At hot spots along the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf Coast, cat predation is a growing threat to shorebirds and long-distance migrants. And as wild habitat becomes more fragmented by human development, even some inland species are under increasing pressure from both house cats and their feral cousins.

In southern New Jersey, feral cats are killing migrating shorebirds, including a number of endangered species. In the scrubland canyons of Southern California, researchers have found that where coyote populations decline, the nonbird-eating carnivores are often replaced by domestic cats. Cat predation then leads to a decline in the abundance of native birds like the California quail, the greater roadrunner and the cactus wren.

On the big island of Hawaii, the problem approaches crisis proportions. The feral cats of Mauna Loa, the island’s active volcano, are decimating Hawaiian petrels, a seabird that nests in the volcano’s lava crevices and takes off on foraging runs to the Aleutian Islands — a round trip of more than 4,500 miles.

Several years ago, Fern Duvall, a wildlife biologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, compared two Hawaiian islands: one with a high feral-cat population, the other without any cats at all. He looked at fledging rates of seabirds, which measures the percentage of chicks that successfully leave the nest. On the cat island, only 13 percent of the chicks made it out alive. On the cat-free island, 83 percent survived.

SNIP