poaching – Pain In The Bud

Journalists Need To Stop Citing The Bunk Studies Blaming Cats For Annihilating Wildlife

Free-ranging cats do have a negative impact on wildlife, but we’re not going to solve the problem by demonizing them and culling them by the millions.

The Literary Hub story starts off with a provocative question: what if cats ruled the world?

This is a question I find amusing to ponder, so instantly my mind was filled with images of cats scandalizing foreign heads of state by insouciantly swiping gifts off tables, angering diplomats by yawning and nodding off during summits, and financing the construction of massive and unnecessary coastal walls, on the off chance the ocean decides to move inland and get them wet.

Then the writer cited the repeatedly-debunked “study” that credulous media of all stripes still reference without bothering to read the text — that infamous 2013 Nature Communications paper, published by birders who author books with titles like “Cat Wars: The Consequences Of A Cuddly Killer.”

Some journalists don’t know any better, some are overworked, and some are frankly too lazy to read the study with a critical eye, but I think one of the more likely reasons people continue to cite the paper is because it’s easier to blame felinekind for wildlife extirpation than it is to admit we’re the primary culprits. After all, according to the WWF’s most recent annual review, we’ve killed off 73 percent of Earth’s wildlife since 1970, and we certainly didn’t need house cats to help us push elephants, rhinos, every species of higher non-human primate, and innumerable other species to the brink of extinction.

We did that. We did it with our relentless development, consuming and fracturing wild habitats. We did it with careless industrialization, by dumping chemicals and garbage into our rivers and lakes until more than half of them were rendered too polluted to swim in or drink from. We did it by bulldozing old growth forest and jungle, by exploiting species for fur, folk medicine, ivory, sport hunting and in the illegal wildlife trade.

Cheetahs are critically endangered, and they’re being driven to extinction even faster by poachers, who sell them to wealthy buyers in oil-rich gulf states where they’re trendy pets. Credit: Riccardo Parretti/Pexels

More than 47,000 species — that we know of — are headed toward extinction. It’s so much easier to blame it on anyone or anything else than admit we need to make major changes to our lifestyles and policies.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Alley Cat Allies has to say about the 2013 meta-analysis and its derivative papers:

“The Smithsonian-funded study published in Nature Communications is not rigorous science.
It is a literature review that surveys a variety of unrelated, older studies and concocts 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.“

Here’s what a group of ethicists and anthropologists wrote about the claims against cats in the journal Conservation Biology, lamenting the lack of nuance and danger in arguing that cats must be stopped “by any means necessary.” The drive to blame felines, they argue, has “fueled an unwarranted moral panic over cats”:

“Contrary to Loss and Marra’s claims that the scientific consensus is consistent with their views that cats are a global threat to biodiversity, the actual scientific consensus is that cats can, in certain contexts, have suppressive population-level effects on some other species (Twardek et al. 2017). This is something that is true of all predators, native or not (Wallach et al. 2010). Thus, cats should not be profiled as a general threat a priori and without reference to important factors of ecological context, situational factors, clear definition of harms, and evidence thereof.”

“There are there are serious reasons to suspect the reliability of the new, extreme cat-killer statistics,” wrote Barbara J. King, retired chairwoman of the department of anthropology at The College of William and Mary.

Feline predatory impact varies by local conditions. Free-ranging cats in cities and suburbs kill rodents, but have minimal impact on other animals, data shows. Credit: Patricia Luquet/Pexels

Like we’ve often noted here on PITB, the authors of the Nature Communications study can’t even say how many free-ranging felines exist in the US. They say it’s between 20 and 120 million. That’s a 100 million difference in the potential cat population! How can they tell us how many birds and mammals are killed by cats if they can’t even tell us how many cats there are? No amount of massaging the numbers can provide an accurate picture if the initial data is shaky or nonexistent.

Furthermore, the nature of a meta-analysis means the authors depend on earlier studies for estimates on predatory impact, but the 2013 Nature Communications paper does not include any data —not a single study — on feline predatory impact. In other words, they have no idea how many animals free-ranging cats actually kill.

In authentic studies that actually do measure predatory impact, the data varies widely in geographic and demographic context. Data derived from the D.C. Cat Count, for example, shows that cats living more than 800 feet from forested areas rarely kill wildlife, and are much more likely to kill rodents.

Those who cite the bunk study and its derivatives are “demonizing cats with shaky statistics,” King wrote, adding she was alarmed by “an unsettling degree of uncertainty in the study’s key numbers.”

Free-roaming populations are reduced when cat colonies are managed, and the animals are fed and fixed. Credit: Mia X/Pexels

Ultimately, we agree with Wayne Pacelle, former president of the Humane Society of the United States.

The meta-analysis authors “have thrown out a provocative number for cat predation totals, and their piece has been published in a highly credible publication, but they admit the study has many deficiencies. We don’t quarrel with the conclusion that the impact is big, but the numbers are informed guesswork.”

Cats do have a negative impact on wildlife, it varies according to local circumstances, and those of us who love cats have a responsibility to keep our pets indoors and help manage free-ranging populations.

But cooler heads must prevail, approaches to managing cats must be evidence-based, and the effort requires people of all kinds working together — which becomes much more difficult when agenda-driven pseudoacademics whip people into a frenzy by portraying felines as bloodthirsty, invasive monsters who need to be wiped out “by any means necessary.”

When that kind of rhetoric drives public policy, you get countries like Australia killing two million cats by air-dropping poisoned sausages, vigilantes gunning down cats with shotguns in public parks, and local governments offering cash prizes to children who shoot the most cats and kittens. Those efforts aren’t just cruel and inhuman, there’s not a shred of proof that they do a damn thing to help other species.

Solving the problem of free-ranging cats requires us to own up to our own role in species extinction and to take measured, evidence-based steps to protect vulnerable wildlife. Otherwise, we’re inflicting a whole lot of suffering on sentient creatures and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

You’re No One Without A Pet Tiger: How The Gulf’s Rich Kids Show Off

Cheetahs are on the precipice of extinction because of relentless poaching on behalf of the children of oligarchs, and showing off collections of rare big cats has become de rigueur on social media.

Imagine you’re an obscenely wealthy Emirati heir, a Saudi prince, or the scion of a global business empire in Dubai.

You started an Instagram account, but sadly photos of your Lamborghinis and McLarens aren’t really moving the needle. In the circles you run in, everyone has those. Likewise, your $20 million digs are pedestrian by the standards of Gulf opulence, and showing off private jets is so 2023.

You need something to stand out, to show the peasants that you’re not just a fabulously affluent heir, you’re also really cool and everyone should envy you.

You need a big cat.

Maybe even cats, plural, if you can’t swing an ultra rare white lion or an 850lb liger on the illegal wildlife market.

“I’m not trying too hard in this photo, am I?”

Just imagine your follower count blowing up, and how jealous the peasantry will be when you post images of your apex predator pet chillin’ in the passenger seat of your Sesto Elemento, with a pair of $20,000 sunglasses on his head for the lulz.

That’s what’s currently happening in the Gulf among the incredibly well-off children of royalty, aristocrats, oil oligarchs, shipping magnates and other bigwigs, a report in Semafor notes.

“Of course you can’t put them in the Lamborghini, beratna! You don’t want those claws near your leather seats. Besides, my liger shall have his own custom made Koenigsegg with a gear shift he can operate by paw!”

In addition to providing compelling ‘tent to their social feeds in the form of photos and videos, it’s clear the owners believe big cats offer a kind of osmotic badassery: if you have your very own lion, you must be a powerful and interesting person!

This kind of thing is not new. Years ago there was a brief outcry when wildlife groups begged authorities to protect cheetahs, who are already critically endangered and risk extinction if global elites are allowed to continue to poach them and their cubs from the wild.

As CNN noted at the time:

“While many of these states – including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – ban the private ownership and sale of wild animals, enforcement is lax.

The overwhelming majority of these cheetahs end up in Gulf Arab mansions, where Africa’s most endangered big cats are flaunted as status symbols of the ultra-rich and paraded around in social media posts, according to CCF and trafficking specialists.”…

The trend is of “epidemic proportions,” according to CCF, an organization devoted to saving cheetahs in the wild. At the current rates of trafficking, the cheetah population in the region could soon be wiped out.

“If you do the math, the math kind of shows that it’s only going to be a matter of a couple of years [before] we are not going to have any cheetahs,” said Laurie Marker, an American conservation biologist biologist and founder of CCF.

Youtube has its share of dauphins showing off cats and cars, and Instagram has an entire sub-genre of pages featuring men in pristine white robes posing in million-dollar hyper cars next to cheetah cubs or tigers who have been sedated to their eyeballs.

As the Semafor report explains, technically keeping big cats is illegal in most Gulf states, except for the super rich. They can skirt existing wildlife laws by getting permits as private “zoo” and “sanctuary” operators, and who’s to say a good zookeeper can’t keep his jaguars in an enclosure with Maseratis and Aston Martins?

One guy even runs a place called Fame Park, a private zoo. The only way to get in is if he deems you famous enough, and thus worthy, to gaze upon his wondrous menagerie of endangered beasts.

The park’s motto is “Where luxury meets wildlife wonder,” and its operator styles himself as a conservationist who just happens to enjoy rubbing elbows with esteemed figures like Andrew Tate and Steven Seagal.

“What pet? I am a licensed zookeeper! In my zoo, enrichment is provided by Ferrari.”

Things really haven’t changed much in the last few hundred years, have they? One way royals and aristocrats amused themselves was by sending explorers to far off lands and instructing them to bring back strange animals.

That’s how elephants ended up in the courts of European kings, and how Hanno the Navigator found himself in mortal danger when he tried to capture gorillas, then decided they were “too violent” to drag back home and had them executed.

A court elephant photographed in 1851 by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey, an English administrator in the British Raj. This elephant is pictured in regalia used for royal processions and other ceremonies. Credit: National Gallery of Scotland

These days, the centers of power have shifted, but human behavior has not. Part of me still has hope, but the cynic in me fears people with the means to exploit rare and endangered animals will continue to do so until there are no more animals left to exploit.

Another critically endangered pet cheetah in a hyper car. Credit: Some clown’s Instagram

Everyone knows that in the wild, big cat cubs nurse from Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and cheetahs learn to run fast by participating in drag races against the hyper cars. Credit: Another clown’s Instagram

Elephants Call Each Other By Name, Study Says

Elephants encode names and other information in low-frequency rumbles that can be heard miles away. For social animals who live in large herds, it’s crucial to be able to address individuals.

Elephants are famously social animals, moving in matriarchal herds that can consist of as many as 70 of their kind.

They also communicate over long distances, emitting rumbles that can be heard miles away.

Because of their social and nomadic existence, it makes sense that elephants would need a way to single out individuals and address each other, and for the first time researchers say they’ve found evidence of Earth’s largest land animals calling each other by name.

“If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here!’” Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm told the Associated Press.

The research involved field work and analysis using artificial intelligence. To record samples of elephants communicating, teams followed herds with recording equipment. Notably, elephant rumbles include sounds in frequencies lower than the human ear can detect.

large elephants near lake — Credit: Pixabay/Pexels

The team paid close attention when one elephant vocalized and another responded, and recorded who initiated each rumble and who it was meant for.

Although elephants are best known for making loud “trumpeting” sounds, experts say those are more like exclamations while rumbles contain encoded information that African savanna elephants would need to communicate to each other.

“The rumbles themselves are highly structurally variable,” said Mickey Pardo, a biologist from Cornell University and co-author of the study. “There’s quite a lot of variation in their acoustic structure.”

A machine learning algorithm was then used to sort and categorize the large number of audio samples, looking for patterns that are difficult for human minds to detect.

“Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other — this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals,” said George Wittemyer, an ecologist at Colorado State University and co-author of the study. “We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind.”

A female elephant with her young offspring in Kenya. Credit: Pixabay/Pexels

Notably, the elephant “names” are identifiers that they created for themselves, and are not the kind of human-bestowed names that cats and dogs respond to. The list of animals who have names for themselves is short, although likely to expand with further study. Dolphins, for instance, identify themselves with unique whistling patterns, and parrots have a similar method, but both species address individuals by imitating their calls. Elephants use their name analogs the way humans do, to directly address each other.

The research has the potential to raise public awareness of elephant intelligence and their plight as they face threats to their continued existence. Like almost all of the Earth’s iconic megafauna, elephants will become extinct if we don’t do a better job protecting them and ending the ivory trade. Every year about 20,000 elephants are slaughtered for their tusks to feed the demand for ivory, especially in China where it’s considered a status symbol, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Yang Feng Glan, known as the”Queen of Ivory,” was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Tanzanian court in 2019. Yang smuggled some 860 elephant tusks worth $6.5 million from Tanzania to China as the leader of one of the world’s most extensive poaching and ivory smuggling organizations.

During her years operating the smuggling ring, Yang presented herself as a successful businesswoman and ran in elite circles within China, authorities said. Two of her accomplices were also given 15-year sentences for their roles, but since then others have filled the vacuum left by Fang’s conviction, and elephant preserves are constantly under threat from heavily armed poachers.

Feds Nab Couple Selling Jaguar, Margay, PLUS: Cat Wins ‘Hambone’ Award For Derpy Accident

Giles the cat is recognized for the most ridiculous pet insurance claim of the year, while federal prosecutors use the new Big Cat Public Safety Act to go after alleged illegal wildlife traders.

A Texas man and his wife were arrested after allegedly selling a margay kitten and trying to sell a jaguar cub in a second deal, federal authorities said.

Rafael Gutierrez-Galvan, 29, and his wife Deyanira Garza, 28, whom prosecutors describe as “legal permanent residents,” sold the margay cub for $7,500 to an undercover agent, meeting him in the parking lot of a Texas sporting goods store on Aug. 24. On Sept. 26 Gutierrez-Galvan made plans to sell the jaguar cub to the same man, and agents arrested him and his wife en route to the meet-up, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.

Gutierrez-Galvan and Garza face federal charges under the new Big Cat Public Safety Act, which was signed into law in 2022. They can be sentenced to a maximum of five years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine if convicted.

Prosecutors did not say how the couple obtained the two wild cats or if they were working with anyone else.

jaguarmargray — The margay kitten, left, and jaguar cub recovered from a Texas couple who are accused of illegally selling them. Credit: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas

Jaguars are endangered and margays are threatened. Both are native to South America, although jaguars once ranged as far north as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Margays (leopardus wiedii) are small arboreal wildcats who thrive in the deep jungle, away from human interference. They’re typically smaller than domestic cats, with an average weight of six pounds, and are among the most sure-footed of all felid species.

Jaguars (panthera onca) are true big cats and the only extant big cat species native to the Americas. They’re under enormous pressure from Chinese poachers, who capture and kill them to use their body parts in traditional Chinese “medicine,” as well as local illegal wildlife poachers. Both jaguars and margays, as well as other cat species native to South America, are also endangered by habitat loss.

Header image of a margay in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, credit: Anderson Cristiano Hendgen via Wikimedia Commons

New York cat wins Hambone Award for most ridiculous pet insurance claim

The Hambone Award was started in 2009 when a family filed a pet insurance claim for their dog who got trapped in a refrigerator, suffered mild hypothermia and tried to make the best of the situation by eating an entire ham.

That inspired the Veterinary Pet Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Nationwide, to create the award and make it an annual event. The first recipient of the “honor” was Lulu, an English bulldog who ate 15 baby pacifiers, a bottle cap and part of a basketball, necessitating a trip to the veterinarian and an insurance claim.

This year the award went to Giles, a handsome black kitty who has a habit of hiding in a sofa bed and getting stuck there when one of his humans folds the bed back into the couch. His humans, Kaitlyn and Reid, always check to make sure Giles isn’t in the space beneath the bed when they fold it up, and had warned Reid’s visiting parents that the playful cat likes to hang out there, but they forgot to check and ended up smooshing Giles.

c1920_giles-hamboneaward — Giles poses proudly next to his Hambone Award. Credit: Nationwide

Luckily the little guy didn’t break any bones, but he did take a hit to the face pretty hard and needed stitches.

“I [had] no idea what’s going on—we got him in his carrier and ran him up the street,” Reid said. “Luckily, we have a wonderful vet hospital just around the corner from us, so we were able to take him right there. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad. He did need some stitches … but he was the model patient, as he always is.”

Giles’ competition this year was mostly dogs, but the other feline finalist was Miko, a New Orleans cat who spotted a pair of doves nesting in a hanging plant just outside on the patio. Miko executed a Jordanesque leap and swatted at the doves, but as the birds fled one of them gave the bold cat a parting gift, pecking Miko in the face. Thankfully he wasn’t seriously injured.

For his exploits, Giles received a trophy and his humans will receive a gift card and a donation in their name to the pet charity of their choice.

Humans Are An Alien Invasive Species, New Study By Feline Science Institute Finds

Humans are an invasive species who are spectacularly adept at destroying life, a new study has found.

Homo sapiens are an invasive species who do irreparable harm to the environment and other animals on an unprecedented scale, a new study by the Feline Science Institute has found.

The results prompted feline scientists to add homo sapiens, commonly known as humans, to a database of destructive and invasive animals maintained by the Academy of Scientific Studies.

Cat scientists have only just glimpsed the breadth of human-initiated impact on other animals, Dr. Oreo P. Yums, lead author of the newest research paper, told reporters.

“We found humans are astonishingly, almost indescribably destructive,” Yums said. “For instance, although they fret about birds, humans kill more than a billion of them a year just with their skyscrapers, which birds are prone to fly into due to their mirrored surfaces. Add in wind turbines, cell towers, power lines, habitat loss and slow die-offs due to chemicals, and by conservative estimates we’re talking about billions of birds killed by humans every year without even tallying active measures like hunting.”

Humans have killed off an estimated 70 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last 50 years alone and show no sign of stopping. Oceans are overfished, animals like pangolins and big cats are ruthlessly hunted to extinction to feed demand within the Chinese traditional medicine market, and human addiction to palm oil means the “two-legged demon monsters don’t even have sympathy for their fellow primates,” mewologist Charles Clawin said.

“In Borneo and Sumatra there are entire schools, filled to capacity, for critically endangered orangutan babies who were orphaned by human contractors clearing ancient jungles to make room for more palm oil plantations,” he said. “Often, the humans use industrial equipment to tear down trees while the orangutans are still in them. Other times, they dispatch the mothers with pistols, not realizing there are babies clinging to them.”

In Africa, where the elephant population has plummeted in the last century, more than 110,000 elephants have been slaughtered in the past 10 years alone for their tusks. The elongated incisors are used to make jewelry and piano keys, and items made from ivory have become a status symbol in China, where growing middle and upper classes seek to show off their wealth with luxuries.

In 2019, Chinese businesswoman Yang Felan, dubbed the “Ivory Queen,” was arrested and charged with smuggling $2.5 million worth of tusks from Tanzania to her home country. Yang, “a key link between poachers in East Africa and buyers in China for more than a decade,” was a respected businesswoman, investor, restaurateur and vice chairwoman of the China-Africa Business Council.

“Poachers continue to slaughter elephants and our big cat brothers and sisters,” said Luna Meowson, who tracks the illegal wildlife market for the University of Nappington. “Having extirpated tigers from virtually their entire range, poachers are turning to South America, where jaguar poaching increased 200 fold between 2015 and 2020. It never stops.”

Big Bruce the Lion Slayer — A human hunter poses victoriously after heroically slaying a lion (panthera leo) from atop his trusty steed, a mobility scooter, after a team of guides drove him around the bush in an air-conditioned SUV, then lured the animal directly into his line of sight. A female of the species, presumably his mate, looks on proudly.

Although the earliest details remain murky, fossil records show Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The invasive species, which has a gestation period of about nine months, began rapidly breeding and immediately went to war with fellow members of the genus Homo.

After wiping out two-legged rivals including Homo neanderthalensis, Homo altaiensis, Homo denisova and Homo bodoensis, the victorious Homo sapiens set their eyes on other species. Throughout their history they’ve also proven remarkably adept at murdering themselves and continue to hone their skills.

“Those OG humans, they had to really work at slaughtering other species and extirpating wildlife,” said Chonkmatic the Magnificent, King of North American cats. “They didn’t have attack helicopters, stealth bombers, tanks, carrier battle groups, daisy cutters, artillery, mortars, phosphorous, napalm, biological weapons, or even small arms like rifles. In those days a pimply kid from Oklahoma sitting in an air-conditioned base in Virginia couldn’t wipe out an entire city 5,000 miles away by pressing a button ordering a drone to drop a nuke. They had to put some sweat into violence, you know?”

522616 — *Breakthroughs in recent centuries have led to innovative and more convenient ways for Homo sapiens to author mass destruction and render entire sections of the Earth lifeless.*

The species, known for its aptitude for tool-making in addition to eating ultra-processed foods and staring at screens, began with simple tools of destruction like the Mark I Spear, early bows and even torches. Over the centuries they innovated, coming up with clever and inventive new ways to inflict pain and end life until the advent of electricity, the industrial era and the brutally destructive war machines of modern times.

Human scientists have tried to obscure their species’ impact on wildlife and the planet by declaring species like felis catus “invasive” and “alien,” but even if cats are “guilty of grabbing a forbidden snack every now and then,” they don’t have the coordination, technology or will to carve up habitats, render entire swaths of the Earth uninhabitable with nuclear fallout, create Everest-size mountains of garbage, or effortlessly drive millions of species to extinction, Clawin said.

“They’re so good at it, they don’t even have to try,” he noted, pointing out human accidents or incidents of negligence like oil spills and chemical run-off into rivers. “We tend to think of humans out there with shotguns and rifles, cackling maniacally as they shoot anything that moves. And, sure, they do that, especially in places like Texas where the sight of any animal always prompts the question ‘Should we shoot it?’ But our research shows they can wipe out entire categories of fauna in their sleep. It’s remarkable.”

Additional reading: Polish institute classifies cats as alien invasive species