In Daily Maverick Tiara Walters wrote "200,000-plus wild animals slaughtered in Table Mountain National Park by Cape Town cats each year" about a journal paper by University of Cape Town FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology researchers.
In 2010 John Yeld wrote a similar article in the Cape
Argus:
“Cape Town's moggies are having a
significant effect on the city's wildlife, killing – at a conservative estimate
– somewhere between 3.9 million and 5.9 million animals each year.”
It was about UCT Master's
student Sharon George’s thesis in which she described her survey of 78 cats,
using GPS, in Cape Town suburbs from which she extrapolated the number of
domestic cats kills in the Cape Town metro. Robert Simmons was George’s
supervisor and wrote a paper
about it.
The World of Bird's Walter
Mangold responded disagreeing with aspects of her findings.
I also wrote – Yeld replied
to me but my letter wasn't published – and to Simmons and questioned her
methodology: whether she could make a credible estimation of the city's cats
based on only 78; using only questionnaire responses from the vets she
approached; whether she used the sample only because of their proximity to the city’s
parks, and her assumption x number of
cats will always kill y numbers of wildlife, i.e. false correlation.
I wrote it's wrong to assume any
and all cats will kill even if presented an opportunity. I asked if her study
made allowances for cats living in flat complexes and those too young, too old
or too sick to hunt.
The biggest problem is estimating
the number of cats (or dogs, birds, cars, washing machines or laptops as the
case may be) based on population: a percentage of households, no one knows how
many, have cats, most don't.
In fact, there are simply too
many variables for city-wide extrapolations to be useful.
I asked if she had conducted a
comparative analysis of cat wildlife kills compared to other causes – humans,
motor vehicles, urban development, etc. Had she done so, she might have found
cat kills are relatively small. I asked why she and Simmons expressed an
anti-cat agenda that was about penalising cats and cat ownership. (Disclosure:
I have nine and most don’t kill, and when they do, irregularly. Dogs roaming
around the neighbourhood, including on leash, are more of a menace.)
Simmons replied but failed to
properly respond to my questions. I got the sense he and his colleagues are ideological
proselytes as many academics are about their topic.
Now they’re at it again using a
similar flawed methodology. This time they claim 200 000 kills a year in a
defined area. This is a rich vein for UCT. Will they produce papers about cat
kills in townships, City Bowl, Kirstenbosch ...? Robben and Marion islands have
been covered.
The paper in Global
Ecology & Conservation must be based on Frances Morling's Master's
thesis (she’s listed as a co-author) Cape
Town’s Cats: Reassessing predation through kitty-cams.
Once again the problem of
population size rears its head. Morling: “I estimated the average number of
domestic cats per 100 households from my surveys and then multiplied this by
the total number of households in Newlands to provide a population size
estimate for domestic cats in this suburb. I then divided this value by the
total area estimate for Newlands suburb of 350 hectares to derive a density
estimate (p26)”.
And like George (Morling refers
to George and one Peters), her sample is skewed to an area, Newlands, that’s
immediately adjacent a park where one expects a higher density of wildlife and
higher kills, i.e. population bias.
“The data from questionnaires
were collated and a total of 14 domestic cats were selected for the behaviour
and predation components of the study. Seven domestic cats were chosen from the
urban edge, i.e. households with no barrier to movement into TMNP; and seven
domestic cats were chosen from deep urban areas, i.e. households in built up
areas greater than 500 m from the edge of TMNP and/or impeded by a four lane
highway.”
From a statistically negligible
14 cats, that’s a lot of multiplying and dividing to reach a determined city-wide
outcome (changing the facts to suit the conclusion) with near-zero established
fact.
I'm not a zoologist so it's
beyond my competence to write a paper disputing their findings. But I can comment as a public intellectual since DM wrote about it.
At the time of George’s
paper I asked my vet Dr Rob Hazel (now retired) if a sample size of 78 was good
enough. He said no. If it wasn't good enough then, 14 definitely is worse.
Simmons and UCT's zoologists are
up in arms again about cats but – they can correct me if I'm wrong – were silent
about, for example, the Western Cape Government's disgraceful "Bredell
Cull" which authorised the killing of up to 900 000 predators
including apex predator Cape Leopard. I know for a fact (I obtained the
evidence) that c2011 CapeNature euthanized a leopard at the behest of a Ceres
farmer and CN’s then acting head Dr Kas Hamman[1] lied to the public about it.
(WCG with then Premier Helen
Zille’s tacit or explicit approval pressured CN to implement a pro-farmer
hunting policy after farmers, DA donors, pressured them. Farmers were/are reluctant to adopt pro-predator farming
policies like using mountain dogs to protect herds. Woolworths had a project
that sponsored these dogs as part of its good environmental journey. But according
to the project manager, its farmer suppliers “lied” on audits. Farmers are
largely disinterested in the programme. I think WW’s project was discontinued.
I'd be interested to know
Simmon's et al opinion, if they have one and written about it, about the
loss of wildlife and biodiversity as a result of the city’s carte blanche urban
development or CN's[2] and WC's culling policy. And why the Zoology Department is fixated
on cats.
This study is based on a poorly
sampled (14 cats) student’s Master’s thesis – not a PhD – where a much lower
research threshold is demanded. It is useful as most (but not all) research is.
But without context, and
especially without a realistic census of cat numbers (did they ask the city,
which tried to register domestic animals per its animal policy, and welfare
groups for an estimate?), the findings of damage remains speculative.
UCT's zoologists, Simmons in
particular, continue to push an agenda while apparently ignoring other, real
threats to wildlife in the city that includes the city's red-carpet approach to
development. If I missed that study,
I’m sorry; you could write an article about it.
In the meantime, the media must observe the Chinese Wall between news and opinion. They must be responsible and objective and not unquestioningly champion someone else’s cause
and sensationalise like “will cat owners [and] authorities listen?” (Walters) as if they’re
criminal, irresponsible gun owners, drunk drivers or negligent parents who let
their children out to play in the road or to be abducted.
I’m not minimising the impact
cats are having on wildlife; they’re effective predators. But unless and until
a survey of their numbers, including feral cats, is done, it’s guessing.
Might I suggest the researchers’
time and efforts would be spent at animal welfare clinics where they can see
firsthand the cruelty to animals that’s systemic to and reflects our violent society.
And they should ask why the City of Cape Town has not made sterilisation
compulsory for cats and dogs and why it abandoned enforcing the good intentions
of its Animal By-law.
Postscript
Australia
has a culling programme of 2 million feral cats by shooting, trapping and
poisoning which sections of the public and government enthusiastically, and
violently, support. New
Zealand’s cities have a similar programme.
I doubt, though, such a plan
would be permitted here under South Africa’s laws. But sensational approaches
like UCT’s and DM’s to the extent of the alleged cat damage, and not in context
of damage by other causes, i.e. demonising only one, creates the climate where
government like WCG, which already eagerly culls naturally occurring predators,
and cities like Cape Town might consider it. We’re already a very violent
country. Let’s not be responsible for adding to it.
Footnotes
[1] Conservationist and whistleblower Dr Bool Smuts won a Cape High Court case against CapeNature and WCG which ruled the leopard's killing was illegal. I provided Smuts the Malmesbury Vet's report that stated the leopard was in good health (Hamman's reason for the killing was that it was seriously injured) that I obtained from a resistant Hamman/CapeNature under a Promotion of Access to Information Act application. He refused to release other information and lied about its existence. I found him to be insincere, duplicitous and complicit in regulatory capture.
On his retirement Yeld wrote an uncritical and flattering interview of him. Both dismissed the controversy of the Bredell Cull in one sentence. Hamman was unrepentant for his key part, with the board, in relenting to political pressure. CapeNature's head, whom Hamman replaced, was subjected to disciplinary inquiry and dismissed reportedly for refusing to obey WCG's instructions about the cull, which Hamman was complicit in. A CN employee told me the organisation was rife with political intrigue. The WCG later persecuted Smuts, a WC Health Department doctor and district manager, through a separate disciplinary process for three years at state expense. The Labour Court dismissed the WCG's case.
Yeld, like SA's media and environmental journalists, e.g. Tiara Walters in DM's article, are pro-establishment and adopt their views. Yeld was a Zille and DA admirer and gave them favourable reports absent of critical analysis, if the controversy of the culling debacle is anything to go by. And they are a reflection of the country's poor journalistic standards.
[2] Simmons is associated and partnered with CapeNature through various its projects including Overberg Crane Group. Justin O' Riain (UCT) and Colleen Seymour (SANBI), the paper's other senior authors, are similarly directly or indirectly engaged with CN. Particularly Simmons' silence and tacitly condoning CN's politically and commercially driven culling policy, which potentially sees up to 900 000 predators a year killed, while presenting dubious studies claiming fewer, unproven cat kills is indicative of his colleagues hypocrisy and biased anti-cat agenda.
I sent an edited version of this commentary to DM's managing editor Janet Heard, Robert Simmons and City of Cape Town's Ald. Marian Nieuwoudt. There was no response.
Footnote 2 added 7/08/2020.
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