Feral cats, endangered birds each have defenders

[Mugu]

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.


Complete article at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-licats075641347apr07,0,6054776.story

[Chan790]

1. It would seem to me that

capture-and-release (or capture-and-shelter) spay-and-neuter for the cats would be in everybody's interest and solve a good deal of the problems by bringing the feral cat population under control (over time) without resorting to more-extreme measures. With the predatory factor under control, the birds should rebound.

Of course, somebody has to pay for all those cat surgeries.