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this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Keeping your cats indoors won't solve anything. Housecats aren't destroying the bird population, feral cats are. If you want to help, volunteer with your local vet or animal control to capture, spay/neuter, then re-release stray cats.
Not true. Pet cats are about a third of the problem, according to a 2013 nature paper. Feral populations vary a lot by location - some places have almost no ferals but lots of pet cats.
Sauce: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
That study's been going around for years in the media, but mainly because it's sensational. If you actually read the article, I'd hardly say it's very convincing, or very accurate. Also, this.
I read it, it's from 2013
"About a third of the problem" So, not the primary cause (or solution.)
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380
"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality."
The article also states the following regarding more popular studies in the media involving pet cats: "The magnitude of mortality they cause in mainland areas remains speculative, with large-scale estimates based on non-systematic analyses and little consideration of scientific data"
Read the whole paper though. It has percentages. Just sayin
Indoor cats are not a problem because they are indoors. Outdoor cats thar come inside sometimes are a problem indeed but most of them were not adopted they just apeared out of nowhere and you now think it's your cat. So it was feral at some point or at least was born from one.