# No TNR programs in Australia?



## Emmalouiseb (Aug 13, 2014)

I read a lot about trap-neuter-returning on this forum but being from Australia I'm not sure we do anything similar. I also work with a Slovenian who says they do it in a lot of European countries as well. All feral cats that come into my shelter or any other shelter or vet where I live are euthanaised if they are too far gone (aka could not be tamed/carriers of FIV/flu etc), because we have so many and they are killing our precious wildlife both by hunting and carrying toxo which is deadly to the native animals. 
We can try and rehome ferals who's temperaments aren't completely messed up, like young kittens who can be trained, but it's very difficult and time consuming to socialise them since we already have so many other cats allllllll the time, and no one else in the general public steps up to do it.

It's incredibly sad but I don't see another way around it, here in Tasmania at least. I'm not too sure about the rest of the country's practices but I know here everyone is very strict on depleting the feral cat population to save the wildlife amongst other issues they bring.

Do feral cats cause any major damage or problems for people or wildlife in America/Canada? They are hated here because of the trouble they cause so nobody wants to save them. The closest thing to "saving" them that we do is to E+D them. 

Also if anyone from Australia knows about a TNR program here I would love to hear about it.


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## FarmCatRescue (Aug 15, 2014)

In the United States, among TNR advocates, Australia and New Zealand are known as places with some of the most viciously hard-core anti-cat policies in the world. I heard within the last year that researchers in Australia are trying to engineer some kind of biological plague that would wipe out all the outdoor cats on the continent. I will refrain from stating explicitly what I think should be done to people who are plotting such actions, but suffice it to say that it is thoroughly medieval. I think they should be stopped by any means necessary.

Over here, there is a small group of scientists who publish the same studies year after year about how many wild animals cats kill, and every year the figures get inflated a bit more, to the point where some scientists have stated that if cats killed as many birds as these researchers claim, the species would be long extinct. The groups behind these anti-cat smear campaigns are The American Bird Conservancy, The Audobon Society, and the one other wildlife group. They use anti-cat hysteria and junk science for the purposes of publicity and fundraising. In the end, we know that habitat destruction is what wiped out the passenger pigeon and what continues to wipe out endangered species, but it's easier for these groups to scapegoat cats to call attention to the problem rather than point the finger at the real culprits: humans. 

Opposed to them are groups like Alley Cat Allies and the blog Vox Felina. TNR has been legalized where I live, but other states like Florida seem to have lots of wildlife management officials under the anti-cat influence. 

This is a highly contentious topic, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Scandals among the anti-cat researchers include a woman hired by the Smithsonian who was convicted of going out at night and poisoning cats in her neighborhood. Can anyone imagine that such a person would be scientifically objective? It's unfortunate, but biofraud is very easy to perpetrate in these cases where there is no one to supervise data collection.


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