North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Brungardt, Sam" <Sam.Brungardt@state.mn.us>]

Title: Message

A good summary of studies on free-ranging domestic cat predation on birds is at http://www.abcbirds.org/cats/factsheets/predation.pdf 

 

You might want to read about a British study on cat predation on wildlife at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2907.2003.00017.x 

 

Also, to try to be balanced about this discussion:  There are links to articles and reports on studies of bird mortality at Alley Cat Rescue's Web page at http://www.saveacat.org/predation.htm.  While this advocacy organization minimizes the importance of cats in bird predation by citing studies that do not stand up to scientific scrutiny and tudies that show that some other causes are responsible for more bird deaths, that they prey on birds is unquestionable.   

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of road's end farm
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 3:47 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] cat predation

On Feb 14, 2007, at 4:26 PM, Jackie Jameson wrote:

Go to www.audubon.org  and do a search for cats.  You'll find all sorts or research, information and campaigns addressing this serious issue for bird conservation.

Jackie

I've seen a batch of such studies. Do you know if they have anything addressing the specific issue I raised (below)? Can you link it, if so? I'm on a slow phone line and it can take me a very long time to hunt through most web sites.

On 2/14/07, road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com> wrote:

Many areas with a lot of free-roaming cats no longer have most of the

original predators who preyed on birds in that area. I don't know if

anyone has ever done studies correcting for this factor, to try to

determine whether the bird mortality rate from cats is higher than a

natural background rate with no cats, but with other bird predators in

the area.

--Rivka

Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly