Nathan Winograd's book - first thoughts

My copy of Nathan Winograd's book, "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America" arrived last Friday and I've been trying to read a little every day. I was going to wait to write something until I had finished the book so I could give a complete review and encourage people to read it, but forget that. GO GET THE BOOK NOW AND START READING!

This is a revolutionary book. I've alternated between rage and tears over it. Let me give you a small taste of the book and why it's so important that we all read it.

In June at the DC City council hearing on DC's proposed animal control ordinance, a group of bird enthusiasts (I can't remember the group's name) argued against the ordinance's inclusion of a TNR requirement for feral cats. They claimed that feral cats decimate song birds and wild migratory bird populations. This took me by surprise, and in the back of my mind since that hearing I've wondered about how to respond to this argument. Here's a taste of what Nathan says on the topic:

The final argument that the HSUS has made to oppose TNR is that cats are not "native" and are killing native birds and other species. Others have joined this chorus...

In a joing campain called "Cats Indoors" established by the American Humane Association, the American Bird Conservancy and the HSUS, the organizations claimed that "scientists estimate that cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year and three times as many small mammals." The coalition's resulting Cats Indoors campaign would later go on to say that

"scientifc studies actually show that each year, cats kill hundreds of millions of migratory songbirds. In 1990, researchers estimated that "outdoor" house cats and feral cats are responsible for killing nearly 78 million small mammals and birds annually in the United Kingdom. University of Wisconsin ornithologist, Dr. Stanley Temple estimates that 20-150 million songbirds are killed each year by rural cats in Wisconsin alone."

Both of these claims fly in the face of evidence, and neither of the studies cited stands up to scrutiny. In the British study, a bird advocate asked a small number of people living with cats who allowed the cats outside to record any birds and small mammals their cats brought home. The researcher then took that number, multiplied it by how many cats he guessed lived in England, and came up with the astonishing number of seventy-eight million. The methodology, to put it mildly, is unscientific; the "study" is nothing more than an oversimplified formula of multiplying a guessed number of cats in England by how many birds a small number of cats brought home. Since the world is not that simple, statistical models are not created by merely multiplying two numbers. The study's formulation is, in the words of one reviewer, "irresponsible and reflects a feeble understanding of basic science."

Science, by contrast, asks qualitative questions: How did the birds die? Did the cats kill them? Were they road kill or fledglings who would have died anyway? Was there any indication of disease in the prey? Was the catch freshly killed or were the birds dead for days? All of these answers could have been found with very little effort, but the author ignored them. More importantly, the study also ignored the fact that several hundred birds in the village where the study was conducted must die each year to maintain a stable population and that the village's bird density was nine times higher than the rest of Britain! These latter facts lead to Jeff Elliott's inescapbale conclusion after he analyzed the study:

"Taken togehter, these elements suggest another interpretation: cats are simply weeding out birds from an overcrowded population. Nor are they apparently catching healthy birds at their peak of winged life; wintertime is most stressful on birds that are old or sick, and fledglings tumbling down from nests could account for the high count in early summer. And with only 130 dead sparrows recorded...the cats kill - or find - less than half the numbers that must be annually culled to sustain their population."

- end of quote from the book

Now if I ever have to respond to the "song bird" argument, I know exactly how.

This is an incredible book and a must read for everyone! The book is available through Barnes and Noble, and you can find more information at www.nathanwinograd.com. I'll try to write more when I finish.