re: How does society benefit from releasing feral cats back into the wild?

Feral cats are one of the top causes of extinction.

People who support them are trash.

they do make great .22 targets for the kids to sharpen up with

Yeh...cats are the problem.

Those "native small animals" aren't native to apartment complexes, bub. They're native to the forest/grassy area that used to be where the apartment or retirement living community now stands. The bulldozers that cleared that area killed WAY more useful wild animals than 5 generations of feral cats living there will kill.

I'm not an environmentalist nor do I care how many rabbits are ruthlessly 'slaughtered' a day (rabbits are a much bigger nuisance than cats, by the way, and cats keep those little effers in check). But don't sit in here talking about how cats are the problem, when in the entire time that apartment complex has sat there, cats have killed far less animals than humans killed in the 1 week it took to clear the land.

Sure, the population of ferals needs to be limited somehow since they don't have a ton of natural predators when they're in more urban communities. But you can do that effectively with TNR, plenty of studies to back that. No need to kill them (unless they're rabid or carrying disease) so a few more lizards will survive, let nature work that out.

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Those "native small animals" aren't native to apartment complexes, bub. They're native to the forest/grassy area that used to be where the apartment or retirement living community now stands. The bulldozers that cleared that area killed WAY more useful wild animals than 5 generations of feral cats living there will kill.

I'm not an environmentalist nor do I care how many rabbits are ruthlessly 'slaughtered' a day (rabbits are a much bigger nuisance than cats, by the way, and cats keep those little effers in check). But don't sit in here talking about how cats are the problem, when in the entire time that apartment complex has sat there, cats have killed far less animals than humans killed in the 1 week it took to clear the land.

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disagree.... when the land is cleared most of the animals don't sit there and get run over - they run..... or fly away.. seen in many times...

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and the reproduce pretty steadily as well.

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They don't reproduce if ya' clip their chords.

And, if you let them back out once they're fixed, they're likely to start (or continue?) killing the kittens in their territory that they run across. So they do the euthanizing for you. 'Save' one old cat, and 10 kittens die. That's a win win, right?

Consider this...

the cats are here and they aren't going anywhere on their own. How many people do you think would volunteer to catch the cats if they were being euthanized compared to how many volunteer to bring them in to be snipped? It's not a solution to the problem, but it at least slows it down.

Actually in some areas, coyotes are thriving, they have adapted well to urban enviroment, but other species are suffering due to the coyotes.

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Actually in some areas, coyotes are thriving, they have adapted well to urban enviroment, but other species are suffering due to the coyotes

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Like cats...

I dunno.. I looked at the stomach contents of the last 3 coyotes I pelted - and they were all 3 "suburban" yotes and... we looked at their stomach contents out of curiosity(I was "invited" to get rid of said coyotes because of pet predation) all 3 had the usual coyote fare...
frogs, mice and of course rabbit - no cat.. although I did see one running down the road carrying a cat recently -

it has been my experience that a coyote has to be starving to go after a dog - from a predator standpoint animals with eyes facing forward - are also predators - which means they can usually fight back - it does appear that they are much less wary of going after cats though.... and.. I have yet to see a yote stick around hearing the sound that sends them scurrying for cover instantly....