A report commissioned by the Scottish government blames cats for killing 27 million birds annually in the country.
“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom! Except maybe to keep pet cats.”
Mel Gibson’s iconic pre-battle rallying cry as Braveheart’s William Wallace might have to be amended if some Scottish politicians get their way and restrict the ownership of pet cats.
Cat lovers in Scotland were up in arms this week after several reports in Scottish and UK media said the Scottish National Party — Scotland’s most powerful political party, which controls almost half the seats in its parliament — is looking to ban cats in a bid to protect local wildlife.
They point to a recently released Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) report that claims there are some 800,000 outdoor cats roaming the country, and those felines are responsible for 27 million birds every year, in addition to small mammals.
Meanwhile, other Scottish press pushed back on the claim, saying the SNP hasn’t voted to ban cats yet and isn’t really looking to stop people from having pet cats.
A report from the Scottish government recommends restricting cats to indoors, among other measures. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In addition to a law requiring people to keep their pet cats indoors, the report suggested curfews and, yes, legislation that would forbid people from keeping pet cats if they live in certain places deemed “vulnerable” to feline predatory habits. That means if wildlife biologists identify an endangered bird that nests in an area, for example, people who live there would not be permitted to have pet cats.
However, the report does not call for a general or widespread ban, as some media reports suggested.
The report credited Australia, where several states have enacted strict measures forbidding people from allowing their cats outside, prohibiting them from owning cats in some places, and even embarking on an infamous campaign to kill three million domestic cats by air-dropping sausages laced with a poison that is lethal to felines, but supposedly not harmful to other animals.
That measure preceded several years of “biblical” rodent plagues, with hordes of mice rampaging across entire swaths of the country and causing billions of dollars in damage to residential and commercial property. Cats are, of course, the natural predators of rodents, and domestic cats wouldn’t exist as a species if they weren’t attracted to human settlements where mice and rats feasted on grain reserves.
CreditL Wikimedia Commons
I haven’t had the chance to take a deep dive into the SAWC report yet, so I don’t know precisely how the commission arrived at the numbers it did, or if the research is original. Hopefully I’ll have a follow up on that soon.
While the truth is somewhere in the middle, so is the solution. People who love cats are happy to voluntarily meet certain guidelines, and they should be, because if we’re uncooperative, someone will eventually turn to compulsion through law. Likewise, concern for the welfare of cats and wild animals aren’t mutually exclusive.
In the meantime, Scotland’s government is likely to spend more money studying the problem before acting.
The kittens died “foaming at the mouth, throwing up bright green.” Acts of vigilantism against cats are happening more frequently as junk science about their hunting habits spreads via news reports.
Cat rescuer Erica Messina was trapping stray kittens to get them out of the cold and into homes before winter, hoping the young cats would have better lives.
Instead, they died horribly shortly after she successfully trapped them from a lakeside colony in October.
“All of the 13 kittens that I had all passed the same way,” Messina told KBTV, a Fox affiliate in Beaumont, Texas. “They were foaming at the mouth, they were throwing up bright green and peeing bright green.”
Two weeks later, per KBTV, a dozen adult cats from the same colony died the same way the kittens did, “some with chemical burns on their noses.”
“I was upset. I was at work when I found out and I came out here and started asking people, you know, what the problem was,” Messina told the station. “I got no answers.”
Like others who have cared for large colonies of strays who were killed by overzealous birders, Messina says she now has PTSD as she’s trying to save the lives of the remaining cats. She’s managed to catch all but four of them with the help of other local cat lovers and rescue organizations.
They’re getting no help from the authorities. Police referred Messina to Beaumont Animal Care, who told her they can’t help unless she can prove the cats were intentionally harmed. Not only are they putting the burden of proof on the victims in this case, but the victims can’t speak for themselves.
‘A bird-watcher’s paradise’
The colony lived in Collier’s Ferry Park, a lakeside park that also borders marshes where migratory birds spend time alongside native species. Indeed, Beaumont, a coastal Texas city of 115,000, markets itself, and Collier’s Ferry Park in particular, as a prime bird-watching spot.
Collier’s Ferry Park in Beaumont, Texas, where 25 cats were killed in an alleged poisoning. Credit: National Parks Service
A 2013 story in the local newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, detailed how local officials and business owners were promoting the park as a bird-watching paradise, noting that “[b]irders in particular are a lucrative market” driving tourism in the city. The story explains how the park is ideal for birds and those who like to watch them, details prized species found there — including herons, the least grebe and cinnamon teal — and includes input from a zoologist with a focus on birds, along with a local businessman who leads guided bird tours on the lake.
Collier’s Ferry Park is also listed on a site for “birding hotspots” while Texas Monthly calls it “one of the country’s best bird-watching spots.”
It is precisely the sort of place misguided bird watchers, driven to rage by widespread junk science blaming cats for declines in bird population, tend to dispense what they believe is vigilante justice. It stretches credulity to imagine anyone but a self-styled conservationist who blames cats for bird extinctions would risk a criminal conviction to poison a colony of cats, especially in a well-known hotspot for bird watchers.
Junk science blames cats for declining bird populations
We’ve written our share about the disingenuous and agenda-driven activism that passes for research, most of it published by Peter Marra, a Georgetown avian ecologist who also authored the book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences Of A Cuddly Killer. The book advocates a “war” on cats and says they must be extirpated “by any means necessary” to protect birds and small mammals.
It does not, notably, put the blame on human activity, including but not limited to habitat destruction, the widespread use of harmful pesticides, wind farms, sky scrapers and all the other man-made structures, chemicals and machines that have contributed to a 70 percent decline in wildlife in the last 50 years.
But don’t take our word for it. Vox Felina calls Marra “a post-truth pioneer” who has claimed cats “kill more birds than actually exist,” while Alley Cat Allies echoes our own criticism by pointing out that Marra’s studies are composites of “a variety of unrelated, older studies” which his team uses to concoct “a highly speculative conclusion that suits the researchers’ seemingly desperate anti-cat agenda.”
“This speculative research is highly dangerous—it is being used by opponents of outdoor cats and Trap-Neuter-Return (including the authors) to further an agenda to kill more cats and roll back
decades of progress on TNR. And it is being spread unchecked by the media.”
In an NPR piece criticizing the studies blaming cats, Barbara J. King shares many of our own criticisms, chiefly that Marra and company have done no original research, relying instead on older studies, most of which have nothing to do with feline predatory habits, and none of which actually measure bird deaths from cats. King also notes, as we have, that it’s impossible to arrive at anything resembling a precise figure for feline ecological impact when Marra et al admit they don’t know how many free-ranging cats there are in the US, offering a uselessly wide estimated of between 20 and 120 million.
She also points out that the research team conducted “statistical perturbations” to massage the data into something fitting their agenda, which is activism, not science.
The researchers are guilty of “violating basic tenets of scientific reasoning when making their claims about outdoor cats,” bioethicist and research scientist William Lynn wrote.
“Advocates of a war against cats have carved out a predetermined conclusion,” Lynn noted, “then backfilled their assertions by cherry picking an accumulation of case studies.”
The war on cats
Across the world, people are using these studies and those of Marra’s acolytes to justify cruel cat-culling programs, like the recently-canceled cat hunt that would have rewarded children for shooting felines in New Zealand, and Australia’s widely-condemned mass culling that used poisoned sausages to kill millions of cats.
Stories of stray and feral cat poisonings in the US abound. Here at PITB we wrote a series of stories exposing how a government biologist in California took it upon himself to hunt cats under the cover of night, killing them with a shotgun and later celebrating in emails to colleagues, calling the dead cats’ bodies “party favors.”
Indeed, one of Marra’s own proteges, Nico Arcilla — formerly Nico Dauphine — went vigilante. Arcilla, who shares author credits with Marra on studies claiming free-ranging cats kill billions of birds, was a working for the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., when she was convicted in 2011 of attempted animal cruelty. The managers of a local colony, suspicious after strange substances began appearing in the feeders they’d set up for the strays, set up cameras which caught Arcilla placing poison on the food left out for the cats.
Back in Beaumont, Texas, a familiar story plays out: people who manage cat colonies out of love for the animals are working with local rescues, pooling together limited resources to save the remaining strays and hoping for justice.
“It’s terrible, you know? There are some people that just hate cats,” said Vyki Derrick, president of local rescue Friends of Ferals. “The rescuers have been trying to pull them out of the colony and it’s just sad that people want to interfere with that when the problem, ‘problem’ is being taken care of.”
Cats are blamed, to the exclusion of almost all other factors, for the decline in native bird populations in New Zealand.
A New Zealand group canceled a cat-hunting competition for kids after receiving massive backlash for the plan, but one Kiwi journalist told a national audience he thinks the cat hunt is a great idea and doesn’t go far enough.
“When it comes to feeral kets, I’m on the soide of the kea, the kākāpō and the kiwi ivery sangle doy of the week and my missige to [the organizers] is ‘Git the competition back on, git the keds back out thea,'” said the vowel-desecrating morning show host Patrick Gower. “If thea gonna hunt and thea’s feeral kets in the way, then we hif to woipe them out. Feeral kets need to be shot, they need to be run ovah, they need to be trepped, they need to be woiped off the foice of Aotearoa and I imploah the school to git it back on, and look, I’ll put up some rewoade as well foah any kets these kids git down theah as well.”
English translation: “I think the cat-killing contest is a wonderful idea, cats need to be shot, run over and exterminated from New Zealand, and I hate cats so much that I’ll put up some of my own money as prizes for the children who bag the most kills.”
You’ve got to wonder what cats have done to Patrick Gower for him to hate them so much, and fortunately dear readers, PITB has the answer!
Gower lost the New Zealander of the Year competition of 2020 to a cute orange tabby named Mittens.
Think about that: All those years of doing Pulitzer-worthy breakfast show kitchen demonstrations, of slaving away at the anchor desk bringing viewers important news about reality TV stars and parroting former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s declaration that New Zealand’s government is “the single source of truth” on COVID, and Gower loses the honor to a damn cat. Mittens even has the key to the City of Wellington, and Gower does not.
So sad.
Mittens receiving honors that have eluded morning show host Patrick Gower. Credit: Wellington City Council
It’s unfortunate when a man in influential position, small country or not, enthusiastically encourages children to practice being future serial killers by slaughtering innocent animals because he thinks — despite the complete absence of evidence — that arbitrarily gunning down and running over sentient animals will save birds.
Really, you’d think before calling for the extirpation of an entire species of animal that these people would have something, even a single bogus research study, claiming that bird populations would recover if only people started killing cats on sight.
But no such proof exists, and the burden of proof rests with Gower, fellow Kiwi cat-hater Gareth Morgan and others who harbor an irrational and ill-advised hatred of tiny animals who are simply behaving the way nature designed them to behave.
What we do know is that managing cat populations can be done, but it’s difficult, time-consuming work that requires dedication and patience.
Cities like Washington, D.C., with its exhaustive cat count, and communities across the US have provided the blueprint with TNR efforts and a mass push for all pet owners to spay and neuter their cats. The results have been remarkable, and shelters save more than a million felines a year compared to just a decade ago. There’s still work to be done to bring the number of euthanizations down to zero.
Gower
It’s also worth noting that the organizers of the North Canterbury Hunting Competition and supporters like Gower are coming from a place of ignorance. In their original, now-deleted announcement, the organizers offered a “guide” to telling the difference between feral and pet cats, unaware that they are the same species. The only difference is that pet cats are fortunate enough to have homes, and strays and ferals do not.
The group said it was offering its “guide” as a way to prevent children from killing pet cats, but how exactly would they do that when a pet is indistinguishable from a colony stray or a feral? Would they find a microchip on the corpse of a cat they killed and say “Oops, guess that one doesn’t count!”?
Does a cat somehow feel less if it doesn’t have a home? Is its life worth less if it doesn’t have a collar and eat from a bowl?
It’s barbaric and so poorly thought-out, it really boggles the mind that the idea of a cat-killing competition for kids was voiced, let alone approved, planned and promoted by supposed adults.
As for the contest itself, we’re very glad it’s been called off, even if the organizers want to play victim and say their feelings have been hurt by the response to their murderous event.
That, however, doesn’t solve the problem. The fact that the organizers thought this was a good idea in the first place, and the increasingly pitched rhetoric from the likes of Gower and Morgan, are normalizing the idea of slaughtering innocent animals who have their own minds, thoughts and feelings, and who have been shaped by 10,000 years of history to live with and depend on humans.
Instead of calling for blood and whipping people into a frenzy, influential New Zealanders should read about cats and animal cognition in general, so they’re aware that felines experience the full range of primary and secondary emotions and are very much capable of suffering the same way we do when we’re injured, stressed and our lives are in danger.
That, unlike claims that cats are primarily responsible for the decline in bird populations, is hard scientific fact. We can peer into the brains of felines, watch their neurons fire, see different brain regions light up as they think specific thoughts and respond to specific smells and sights.
Maybe if people who hate cats understand what they are, they’ll feel some empathy for a beautiful species, animals who have been companions and literal life savers to humans since before deepest antiquity, animals whose lives have intrinsic value regardless of what they mean to us. At the very least, we owe them that.
One of New Zealand’s most prominent economists has called cats “serial killers” who are driven by “bloodlust,” and is one of many who blame domestic cats for the decline of local wildlife.
An annual hunting competition for children in New Zealand has a new category this year, awarding a cash prize to the young hunter who kills the most cats.
You read that right.
The North Canterbury Hunting Competition announced the new category on Saturday and says it will offer a $250 prize to any child 14 or younger who kills the most felines.
In a statement, the local SPCA pointed out the obvious, that cats will suffer horribly, pets will die and the competition will result in bungled kills en masse, leaving wounded cats to suffer horribly before the children finish them off — if indeed they do.
“There is a good chance someone’s pet may be killed during this event,” the Canterbury SPCA wrote in a statement. “In addition, children often use air rifles in these sorts of events which increase the likelihood of pain and distress, and can cause a prolonged death.”
Credit: Ali Arapou011/pexels
Prompted by the same sloppy “research studies” that inspired Australia to kill millions of cats — and resulted in a mouse plague of biblical proportions in 2021 and 2022, causing billions of dollars in damage to farms, homes, businesses and infrastructure — New Zealand is on a disinformation-fueled jihad against felines.
Like all such studies, the claims that cats are singlehandedly responsible for declines in native wildlife, thus absolving direct human activities of blame, come by way of overzealous bird conservationists and others who insist the mass murder of cats will save native birds and small mammals. As if humans destroying habitats, dumping chemical waste, creating wind farms that act as bird dicers, building glass skyscrapers that millions of birds fly into every year, saturating entire swathes of the Earth with light pollution and EM radiation that harms and confuses animals — and all the other things people do — have no impact whatsoever, and it’s only those dastardly cats who are the culprits.
You’ve got to hand it to the misguided conservationists, who have picked tiny scapegoats who can’t defend themselves verbally or physically against humans.
To understand how the “hunting” (killing) competition can be real, it’s important to understand the context of the way cats are portrayed in New Zealand. Gareth Morgan, a Kiwi economist and politician, launched a campaign about a decade ago with the stated goal of eradicating cats from the island nation of 5.1 million people, which would forbid people from adopting new cats and end programs like trap, neuter, return (TNR) in favor of having local animal control departments kill felines.
Morgan, whose Cats to Go site portrays kitties with devil horns and glowing red eyes, says cats are evil animals driven by “bloodlust.”
“Cats are the only true sadists of the animal world, serial killers who torture without mercy,” Morgan has said.
A screenshot from the group’s Facebook page announcing a new prize for young hunters.
The North Canterbury Hunting Competition, which also offers prizes like dirt bikes for child hunters, pulled the new category announcement from its Facebook page on Monday but stopped short of canceling the event, blaming people who were upset by the idea of cat hunting.
Citing abusive feedback, the group said it’s “incredibly disappointed by this reaction” and said the hunt is for a good cause, raising money for local projects.
A government biologist who controversially shot 13 cats referred to the dead felines as “party favors” in an internal email.
A California biologist who shot and killed 13 cats as part of a “predator management program” referred to the felines’ corpses as “party favors” in a celebratory email to colleagues, according to a copy of the email.
David “Doc Quack” Riensche, a senior wildlife biologist with California’s East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), used a 12-gauge shotgun under cover of night to shoot the cats, documents obtained from the EBRPD show.
Riensche and EBRPD knew the felines were part of a colony near Oakland Coliseum managed by Cecelia Theis, a local woman who provided them with veterinary care, food, water and conducted TNR (trap, neuter, return) services to prevent the colony’s population from growing.
They did not warn Theis that they were going to cull the colony late last year, nor did they reach out to contacts in the area’s extensive local shelter and rescue network to trap and remove the strays, despite repeatedly stating that shooting cats is an absolute “last resort.”
“Good morning Lisa and Jeff,” the email from Riensche reads, dated Nov. 18, 2020. “I recently cleaned up more than a ‘bakers dozen’ of party favors in this resource protection area. With the conclusion of this wildlife management action, I am seeing some really good birds starting to re-colonize the area with the limiting factors now removed. Have a great week.”
Riensche, who disposed of the dead cats in trash bags that he tossed into a bin, signed off the email about the dead cats with a smiling emoji.
In an internal email to colleagues, Riensche referred to the dead cats as “party favors.”
Although Riensche uses coded language in the email, the district’s own records, Riensche’s overtime statements for overnight hours, timestamped audio of dispatch calls and EBRPD’s own timeline of the cat killings all line up with the date of Riensche’s email and a spreadsheet documenting when and where Riensche shot the colony cats.
David “Doc Quack” Riensche is a wildlife biologist with the East Bay Regional Park District. Credit: EBRPD
Tiffany Ashbaker, a volunteer with Alameda’s Island Cat Resource and Adoption, said she was horrified when she read Riensche’s email describing the dead cats as “party favors.”
“I was disgusted. Way beyond hurt,” said Ashbaker, who helped Theis trap, neuter, vaccinate and relocate the Oakland colony cats. “I find this to be unethical and he should be removed from his position at EBRPD because of it. I understand why we should try to have cats further away from the protected areas, but how they handled this was eye opening for sure.”
The cats lived between two auto dealerships in an industrial area separate from the MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline, a park in Oakland managed by the EBRPD. When Theis returned to the area to feed the cats on Nov. 3 2020, she realized several were missing. Over the following days more cats began to disappear, Theis and Ashbaker noted.
When Theis asked EBRPD about the whereabouts of the colony cats, a district staffer told her EBRPD wasn’t involved and didn’t remove any cats. EBRPD then amended its response, saying it had trapped the cats and brought them to local shelters.
But none of the local shelters had any records of taking cats from EBRPD, nor did they have the missing cats in their care.
EBRPD admits its biologist killed colony cats
Theis went to KGO, a local ABC News affiliate, and when a reporter began asking questions about the missing cats, a spokesman for the district finally admitted one of its employees — later identified in documents as Riensche — had shot the cats as part of the “predator management program.”
Theis said she felt “a horrible feeling in my gut” when she realized why the usually friendly strays and former pets of the colony were suddenly skittish. Riensche shot the colony cats over a series of nights, returning to the park in the late hours with a shotgun to kill two or three at a time.
Theis said she now understands why the remaining cats were so fearful and skittish when she came by for their regular feedings. One cat named Sherbert jumped on her car hood, and two others meowed insistently at Theis, “trying to tell me.”
“I feel this horrific feeling that they went through terror and were trying to tell me,” Their said. “They weren’t eating like they did usually.”
Some EBRPD board members have expressed sympathy for what happened, Theis said, but she described being “depressed” and worried because the district won’t give her any guarantees that it won’t kill more cats.
“We feel horrible about this, you know, this is really one thing that’s just really sad,” Matt Graul, the EBRPD’s chief of stewardship, told KGO in December, after the public first learned the cats had been shot.
Despite that, EBRPD ignored public records requests from the TV news station, and a spokesman for the district defended the cat culling, saying it was necessary to protect endangered birds who winter in the nearby marshlands.
Stray and feral cats “are not part of a healthy eco-system” EBRPD spokesman Dave Mason said, claiming his agency was protecting endangered wildlife in the area.
Public and animal rights groups demand an end to cat killing practice
After intense public backlash, including a petition with 70,000 signatures protesting EBRPD’s actions, several district board members were quoted in media reports saying they would end the practice of killing cats and would demand an investigation. Almost five months later, the district is instead moving ahead with a plan to contract cat-killing (and the culling of other animals like foxes and opossums) to a federal agency, and there has been no investigation.
Ashbaker, Theis, the non-profits In Defense of Animals and Alley Cat Allies, and local shelters have all demanded EBRPD stop killing animals entirely. District officials continue to argue it’s necessary to protect endangered birds, despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting the idea that arbitrarily shooting animals has any measurable impact on bird populations.
EBRPD has made one concession: It’s promised to reach out to rescues and shelters in the area for help removing cats before making the decision to deal with them lethally.
“While we’re pleased that the policy seems to be to work with local advocates as to prefer not to killing cats, we want to see a pledge that this never happens, ever again,” Fleur Dawes of In Defense of Animals said in February.
The district “should have been up front from the beginning, saying ‘This wasn’t what should have happened, [so] let’s make it right,'” Ashbaker said.
EBRPD has been unable to provide proof that the cats were killing birds on the marsh or that Riensche shot the cats on district property.
In response to a public records request for any documentation of cats preying on birds in the marshlands, EBRPD produced a single document from 1992, noting one incident with one cat about 35 miles south of the MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline where Riensche shot 13 cats in late 2020. During a survey some time before 1992, an EBRPD employee saw an example of “[California Clapper] rail predation” by “what we determined was a feral cat, in a marsh in the East Palo Alto area,” where it says “many cats are found.” The document mentions another cat that was sighted swimming “in flooded tidal salt marshes” in south San Francisco Bay, likely “foraging” for an endangered mouse species.
The district has not been able to produce any written guidelines or protocols describing how its employees determine if a cat should be shot instead of being relocated or brought to a local shelter, except for a vague summary of minutes from a 1998 meeting during which they claim the policy was approved.
EBRPD has been unable to produce copies of the cat-killing policy itself, despite several public records requests seeking that document.
In addition, in internal emails after a KGO reporter began asking questions about the cat killings, several EBRPD staffers questioned whether they have any documentation saying cat culling is an acceptable policy.
EBRPD internal discussion: Are we following our own rules?
In those same internal emails, which were obtained from EBRPD via public records requests, staffers wondered if the district was following its own rules requiring it to reach out to local shelter networks and receive approval from federal authorities to kill cats. One EBRPD official, assistant general manager of public affairs Carol Johnson, noted the document EBRPD used as justification “does not mention dispatching these animals,” and requires the district to “work with animal rescue organizations to help trap feral cats.”
“[The] question is, are we following the protocols listed in the document?” Johnson asked her colleagues in a Dec. 2 email. “I would argue we are minimally following through with the organizations and we have nothing to say lethal means is acceptable.”
After telling local media that an old and little-known policy allowed the district to cull cats, EBRPD staffers could not locate a copy of the policy.
Internal correspondence among EBRPD staff, obtained via a public records request, show worried staffers searched in vain for a written policy on killing cats before using a Google search to find another agency’s policy.
EBRPD finally produced a copy of minutes from a 1998 meeting with notes attached saying the cat-culling policy had been approved by the board, but if a copy of the policy exists, the district has been unable to produce it.
In December Mason said cats were only shot as a last resort and “[L]ethal removal only happens when feral cats are in the act of hunting wildlife on District property,” but none of the documents say the cats Riensche shot were hunting. Indeed, it would require an extraordinary stroke of luck for the biologist to find 13 cats preying on endangered birds in just a few nights.
Despite public records requests, the EBRPD was unable to provide proof that Riensche had consulted anyone before shooting the cats. Records indicate no one was notified until after Riensche killed the animals.
The stray cats lived between Audi Oakland and Coliseum Lexus of Oakland. Credit: Google Maps
In addition, the cat colony sat some distance from the protected marshland: An office park, electric car charging station, at least three parking lots and a substantial body of water are between the cat colony’s home and the marshland. That’s a distance considerably longer than most stray and feral cats range from their homes, and domestic cats are notoriously averse to water or getting themselves wet.
Records line up with cat shootings
While Riensche uses coded language by referring to the cats he shot as “party favors” in his email to colleagues, it was sent on Nov. 18, the day after EBRPD’s own records show he killed the last of the colony cats. Internal documents from the EBRPD, obtained through public records requests, as well as the district’s own public timeline of events, show the dates the cats were killed line up with Riensche’s email. In addition, in audio recordings of his radio contact, Riensche advises dispatchers only after he’s fired the killing shots.
“Yeah this is Dave Riensche in wildlife at MLK, I just dispatched an animal down here, so if you get a call, it was me,” Riensche tells a dispatcher in one of the calls on Nov. 13 at 6:24 a.m.
EBRPD’s records show the only animals killed on that day were cats.
(Click the embedded audio to hear Riensche call dispatch on Nov. 13, 2020.)
Finally, according to EBRPD’s records, Riensche received overtime for working on nights that correspond to the same dates EBRPD says the cats were shot. [EBRPD document: TIMECARDS (REDACTED)]
Riensche, who has been employed as a biologist with the district for decades, is a prominent birder whose work involves protecting birds and other endangered species from predators wild and domestic. He penned a newsletter, Bird News, in the early aughts and is on record saying there’s “a wealth of evidence” that stray and feral cats are the primary danger to bird populations.
Shooting cats as a ‘first resort’
Riensche earned $182,951 in salary and benefits in 2019, the most recent year for which salary data is available for public employees in California. Riensche earned a base salary of $90,239 and $56,050 in overtime, including for overnight hours spent shooting animals in EBRPD’s parks.
An Oakland woman who wrote to the EBRPD after the district came clean about the cat killings related an anecdote about Riensche from 2019.
The woman worked with a local rescue that received a call from a parks employee who wanted help trapping and relocating a female cat and her young kittens who were living on or near an EBRPD park. The rescue volunteers were working with the EBRPD employee, making plans for the cat and her babies to be vaccinated and spayed/neutered, and even had homes lined up for some of the kittens, the woman wrote in a Nov. 25 email.
After visitors to the park saw the mother carrying a dead rabbit back to her kittens, “Doc Quack [Riensche] then reportedly told employees he was going to shoot the cats,” the volunteer wrote.
The mother cat “disappeared” and her fate was unknown, but the rescue was able to work with the EBRPD employees to get the kittens trapped. However, Riensche wasn’t happy with that outcome, she wrote.
“I was told later by an employee, that they were reprimanded for saving the cats and going outside of the EB Parks, to get this help,” the woman wrote in her letter to EBRPD. “Apparently, they should have just been quiet and let Doc Quack shoot the cat family.”
The connection between birders and cat killing
Cat killing isn’t unusual among birders. In 2007 a Texas man named James M. Stevenson — founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society — admitted killing dozens of cats on private and public property after coming to believe the cats were killing piping plovers, shorebirds who commonly nested in the area.
In a 1999 posting on an Internet bulletin board for bird lovers, Stevenson nonchalantly described killing many feral cats during his first year living on Galveston Island. He rationalized his acts as a way to restore the natural order.
“I’m sorry if this offends — but I sighted in my .22 rifle, and killed about two dozen cats,” Stevenson wrote in his message, titled “killer kitties; kittie killers.”
“This man has dedicated his whole life to birds,” Stevenson’s attorney said in his defense. The case ended in a mistrial.
Nico Arcilla, then known as Nico Dauphiné, was well known as a birder and outspoken critic of cats. A group of people who cared for strays near Washington’s Meridian Hill Park contacted the Humane Society after noticing food they left out for the cats “would sometimes become covered by a white powdery substance overnight.”
After the Humane Society and Washington police tested the substance and verified it was poison, they set up a stakeout and had cameras trained on the food bowls. Footage, which prosecutors later exhibited on trial, was damning:
“Dauphiné [Arcilla] can be seen approaching the bowl, pulling something out of a small bag, reaching down toward the food twice, and then leaving the scene,” a sciencemag.org report reads. “The next morning, police found the food covered with the same white powder as before, which tested positive as poison.”
[Click here to see video of Arcilla poisoning the cat food.]
Arcilla wasn’t just a prominent birder and anti-cat campaigner — she is a co-author of several frequently-cited studies claiming cats kill billions of birds in the US each year. Those studies, which have been used to justify cat-culling policies around the world, are highly controversial, with critics blasting them for poor methodology, a lack of hard data, and arbitrary numbers plugged in to estimate both the national cat population and the felines’ impact on birds. For example, the authors estimate a national stray and feral cat population between 25 and 125 million, an estimate so vague that any extrapolations based on those numbers are virtually useless.
Riensche has repeatedly cited Arcilla’s work in public and private documents arguing that cats are primarily responsible for declines in bird populations.
Pain In The Bud 