In Daily Maverick Tiara Walters writes a follow-up to her article last week (see here) about the alleged large numbers of wildlife cats are "slaughtering" on Table Mountain National Park. In her article today she mentions people's response including on Facebook, some disagreeing, and reports Dr Robert Simmons alluding to something I said (see below).
Postscript
I replied to DM and UCT researcher Simmons, who co-authored the Global Ecology and Conservation paper on which Walters' article was based. But my letter was neither published (right of reply) nor was I referred to by name in the follow-up article as other people were.
Daily Maverick claims they publish right of replies and readers' letters but they don't, not mine anyway and not to the first article[1]. Perhaps it's because at times I've complained about poor journalism, as Janet Heard knows. Like Walters' first article when she breached the Chinese Wall between news reporting and opinion.
This time I'm more amused than alarmed about Walters' Apocalypse Meow II: ‘Keep cats inside property’, SANParks urges Capetonians than the first. The hype and hyperbole - and questionable journalism: is it news reporting, opinion or DM's speciality, publishing activism?, a confusion New York Times or The Guardian wouldn't create - and fake news about cats' alleged massacre of wildlife in Cape Town suburbs and TMNP continue.
Simmons[2], for whom cats are a rich source of controversial study material (not much of their research generates public interest), didn't reply either. But he said "'The City of Cape Town could reduce the present limit of four cats per household to two or even one. We learned of a person who has nine cats in their house.' That, he said, translated [i.e. statistically extrapolated from a very small sample] into a possible fatality rate of over 800 prey per year from one household alone.[1]" (emphasis added).
He probably read my email and is referring to us because I wrote we have nine cats. If so: Robert, you're lying, defamatory and a dubious researcher because, as you've done with these studies, you input a tiny sample of - what? - 14 cats in your spreadsheet to arrive at allegedly 800 kills a year from our household. As I said: false correlation.
It's strange "feline experts" must be told not all well-fed domestic cats can and want to kill or have the space or opportunity to do so. For example, one of mine is too old (18-plus) and unsteady and was always a house cat. Another is confined to the house for her own protection. (Apparently in the researchers' sample, only healthy, fit, predator-ready cats were chosen). Of the remaining, during the day more than half are in the house more than 50% of the time. Generally, they don't show an inclination for predation. And we have a nice garden they can relax and hunt in.
We have two bird feeders in a decent sized suburban garden visited by hundreds of birds a day. I didn't witness the kill, but the last one found on the property - a dove - was two months ago. That could also be due to the murder of crows that live in the area (I feed them too). If my cats kill over 10 a year, it's a lot. We simply don't have the massacres Simmons alleges, but, hey, never let facts get in the way of a good story.
This is what happens when desktop study and statistical modelling replaces real world experience (like pandemic denialist PANDA). I'd wager our experience of domestic cats not killing or low-killing is not a black swan event (pun not intended) but more common than the researchers' agenda and bad science acknowledge.
I know cats kill but in context their prey numbers are probably exaggerated so that researchers, who sit in their ivory towers and don't deal with real issues, can agitate and promote their hobby horse. In context it's smaller than road kill, urban encroachment (like the overthetop and extensive MyCiti roadworks nearby that displaced the nesting area of a few plovers) and WC Government and CapeNature authorised culling of predators.
UCT, SANParks and SANBI are quiet about that but obsess about cats. And they don't respond to challenges to their questionable sample. And they're encouraged by tame reporters and complicit media.
Good luck trying to get the City of Cape Town to change or even enforce their domestic pet limit.
Simmons[2], for whom cats are a rich source of controversial study material (not much of their research generates public interest), didn't reply either. But he said "'The City of Cape Town could reduce the present limit of four cats per household to two or even one. We learned of a person who has nine cats in their house.' That, he said, translated [i.e. statistically extrapolated from a very small sample] into a possible fatality rate of over 800 prey per year from one household alone.[1]" (emphasis added).
He probably read my email and is referring to us because I wrote we have nine cats. If so: Robert, you're lying, defamatory and a dubious researcher because, as you've done with these studies, you input a tiny sample of - what? - 14 cats in your spreadsheet to arrive at allegedly 800 kills a year from our household. As I said: false correlation.
It's strange "feline experts" must be told not all well-fed domestic cats can and want to kill or have the space or opportunity to do so. For example, one of mine is too old (18-plus) and unsteady and was always a house cat. Another is confined to the house for her own protection. (Apparently in the researchers' sample, only healthy, fit, predator-ready cats were chosen). Of the remaining, during the day more than half are in the house more than 50% of the time. Generally, they don't show an inclination for predation. And we have a nice garden they can relax and hunt in.
We have two bird feeders in a decent sized suburban garden visited by hundreds of birds a day. I didn't witness the kill, but the last one found on the property - a dove - was two months ago. That could also be due to the murder of crows that live in the area (I feed them too). If my cats kill over 10 a year, it's a lot. We simply don't have the massacres Simmons alleges, but, hey, never let facts get in the way of a good story.
This is what happens when desktop study and statistical modelling replaces real world experience (like pandemic denialist PANDA). I'd wager our experience of domestic cats not killing or low-killing is not a black swan event (pun not intended) but more common than the researchers' agenda and bad science acknowledge.
I know cats kill but in context their prey numbers are probably exaggerated so that researchers, who sit in their ivory towers and don't deal with real issues, can agitate and promote their hobby horse. In context it's smaller than road kill, urban encroachment (like the overthetop and extensive MyCiti roadworks nearby that displaced the nesting area of a few plovers) and WC Government and CapeNature authorised culling of predators.
UCT, SANParks and SANBI are quiet about that but obsess about cats. And they don't respond to challenges to their questionable sample. And they're encouraged by tame reporters and complicit media.
Good luck trying to get the City of Cape Town to change or even enforce their domestic pet limit.
Footnotes
1. DM publishes tendentious, false and defamatory (Simmons' about our nine cats allegedly killing 800 after I said my cats kill very few) statements and information - fake news - but won't publish a reply/rebuttal. If he was referring to a household like ours, or for that matter any that has cats, where the kills are anywhere near that number, let alone above a dozen or two a year, he, his department, co-authors and DM better prove it or retract.
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.
Postscript
I sent an edited version of the above to DM's editor-in-chief Branko Brkic, managing editor Janet Heard, Walters, Simmons and co-authors UCT's Prof. Justin Oriain and Stellenbosch's Koebraa Peters, TMNP's Lauren Clayton and city's Marian Nieuwoudt.
I don't have the email addresses of the other authors Colleen Seymour, Sharon George and Frances Morling. SANBI's website, where Seymour works, doesn't list their addresses. A public organisation that hides its members. As I say, bubble mentality in ivory towers.
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