University of Cape Town Fitzpatrick Institute of Ornithology's Dr Rob Simmons has done yet another study of domestic cats' predatory habits.
Every few years he supervises master's students - by my count three - whose research topic is the same: cats are predators that kill prey (duh!). The recommendations are they must be controlled. Reactions typically border on hysteria with one caller to CapeTalk calling cats "vermin" and journalists urging cats be controlled.
Simmons has made a career of demonizing the exaggerated threat domestic cats pose to wildlife. In doing so he appears not to be concerned about other, pressing threats like traffic, development and agriculture which individually and together are worse and unnatural to the environment (cats are natural predators and existed for thousands of years).
Unfortunately the media pick this up, sensationalise it more and don't interrogate and ask trenchant questions of this "research" - assumptions, hypotheses, methodology, findings - and accept it as proven fact. Like Daily Maverick and 2oceansvibe did a few years ago when Simmons et al publicised old news passing as new, ground-breaking findings.
Two of Simmons et al reports I read from 2009 had a sample size of 70 and 120. From this they extrapolated - note a statistical calculation rather than direct, observable proof - cats were allegedly killing, in the later report, around 100 each small wildlife - reptile, avian, etc - a year. Their methodology made no allowance for elderly, ill, infirm, house-confined, disinclined-to-kill and sedentary cats: all cats were considered killers, and do.
Simmons et al then extrapolated their very small sample results (no doubt including only kills), which I'd argue is not representative, to the guessed cat population of the city/area under their study: conclusions, city cats are killing millions a year. Horrors; something must be done!
Anyone who knows anything about them, as zoologist Simmons and his team ought to, should know not all cats are the same, personalities differ, some hunt and others don't. Simmons is doing a version of universal profiling, which is almost always biased, prejudicial and bad science. Imagine this type of profiling to human populations!
Celia Haddon co-author, with Prof Daniel Mills, of Being Your Cat: What’s Going on in Your Feline’s Mind writing in The Guardian: "I assumed all cats liked to hunt, but there’s growing evidence of a wide range of feline personalities".
A few years ago after DM Rebecca Davis' piece about a Simmons-led study, I mailed both him and DM questioning their research (his three students were co-authors of that study). I said our nine cats, ages 2 to 10, seldom kill - annual total for all two or less. Despite us having three bird feeders, two on the ground, and more geckos than we can count. (In science, observable exceptions are sufficient to disprove an hypothesis.)
Neither he nor DM responded. But in a follow-up article Davis quoted him saying - this is almost a direct quote - "we heard of a person [me] who has nine cats that kill 800 a year".
Simmons was mischievous and dishonest about what I wrote and defamatory. I wrote back but was not granted right of reply.
No one really knows how many domestic and feral cats there are in the city but it's estimated 300 000. To assert each and every cat kills, or has the inclination to kill, is false. And to claim the city's cats are killing millions of small animals a year is unprovable. It's bad science. Good science is what can be directly observed - even the mathematics in scientific studies must be verified by experimentation ie observation - and replicated across a range of conditions time and again.
Simmons has a vendetta against cats - so much for scientific objectivity. His PhD in the field doesn't insulate him from obvious bias. Academics are neither infallible nor gods and must not be treated as such. And poor, agenda-driven "research" only undermines their credibility and their institutions.
As a researcher, he must find a brand new topic and not every few years retread his master's students' projects. It's boring and even nefarious.
We still have nine cats, the youngest one year old, and two young dogs that also chase birds but don't catch anything. And thriving wildlife in our small, semi-overgrown urban garden including three large spiders that have webs in the trees. Them we avoid. This past year there's been only one suspected cat kill. So much for Simmons' suspect conclusions.
I urge cat lovers and vets not to participate with so-called scientific surveys with which UCT, which still cannot get its house in order (re continuous troubles and scandals), Rob Simmons, his students and the Fitzpatrick Institute are involved because they will just be a rehash and used to justify and generate anti-cat fear not unlike the outrageous petition to ban pit bulls.
PostScript
CapeNature is or was a research partner of Simmons. 10 years ago CN colluded with agri-business and Western Cape Government to institute an extraordinary cull of WC's predators - leopards, etc, and even lied about the euthanasia of Ceres-area leopard after a farmer complained about it.
The WC cabinet including Premier Helen Zille, which had been pressurised by farmers who "threatened to take the law into their own hands, had pressurised CN to change regulations to implement the cull of 800 000 animals. I'm not sure if that was per year or not. Horrific results of the cull are available on the internet.
I can't find a record that Simmons and his colleagues, who claim to be concerned about threats to conservation, ever objected to the "Bredell Cull", so called by Landmark Foundation's Dr Bool Smuts, the only conservation body that tried to do anything about the outrage including court action. Zille's administration hounded Smuts, a WC employee, with trumped-up disciplinary charges that failed. By and large the media ignored the story. (Disclosure: I brought charges against WCG and CN at the Public Protector, with evidence that proved the accusations.)
Recently John Yeld, former environment writer for Cape Argus, wrote a book review of a conservation organisation's study of Western Cape’s leopards. Yeld mostly ignored the culling controversy at the time. But he conducted a soft interview of acting CapeNature acting CEO Dr Kas Hamman who had led CN’s aggressive culling policy. Hamman was unapologetic about the cull which had been obtained through illegal means. Yeld accepted his one sentence dismissal of events.
Yeld, like Simmons and most conservation groups, were happy to be part of the WC and CN-led status quo.
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