National Zoo researcher denies poisoning cats
A National Zoo bird researcher denied in court Wednesday that she fed rat poison and antifreeze to feral cats roaming her D.C. neighborhood.
“Absolutely not, no I did not,” Nico Dauphine said after taking the stand in her own defense Wednesday in Superior Court, WJLA reported.
Dauphine is a postdoctoral fellow with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo.
Prosecutors have presented evidence of her disdain for free-roaming cats, as well as a surveillance tape that they said showed her walking up to a planter where food was kept, reaching into her purse, then reaching into the cat food and leaving.
Dauphine argued in court that she was trying to get rid of the food because it attracted rats: “I went over to the planter, took out the food, put it in a plastic bag and threw it out,” she said.
Prosecutors have entered as evidence a number of quotes and articles in which Dauphine describes cats as an invasive species that should be euthanized. One online lecture by Dauphine is entitled “Apocalypse Meow – Free Ranging Cats and the Destruction of American Wildlife.”
Both sides presented closing arguments in the animal cruelty trial Wednesday and Judge Truman Morrison is scheduled to give his verdict Monday afternoon.
Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization, says attempts to poison free-roaming cats — not uncommon across the country — often pose a threat to pets and wildlife..
“There are no ‘safe poisons’ and there is no ‘safe way’ to poison,” said Dr. Frank McMillan, director of well-being studies at Best Friends Animal Society.
Says Laura Nirenberg, Best Friends’ legislative analyst for cat initiatives.”The sad truth is that not only is poisoning an indiscriminate and inhumane method of controlling animal populations, it is unnecessary, especially when growing evidence from communities across the country shows that trap-neuter-return, commonly known as TNR, is the most efficient and cost-effective method.”
Posted by jwoestendiek October 28th, 2011 under Muttsblog.
Tags: animal cruelty, antifreeze, best friends, birds, cats, dc, feeding, feral, feral cats, free roaming, health, migratory bird center, national zoo, neuter, nico dauphine, poison, poisoning, prey, rat poison, return, safety, smithsonian, tnr, trap, trial, washington, wildlife
Comments
Comment from Redbud
Time October 28, 2011 at 11:00 am
I think Nico was just trying to keep rats away from her residence by removing the cat food. These crazy cat feeders just won’t stop feeding no matter how much damage they cause. Feral cat colonies attract rodents and the cats do not control the expanded rodent population. TNT is a loose/loose propasition. The cats suffer, the neighbors suffer and our native species are decimated. Humane euthanasia is akways a better choice than reabandonment to the streets. Wake up Best Friends and read the science!
Comment from Peter J. Wolf
Time October 28, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Esteban, why not attribute your quote? “Hoarding without walls,” as I’m sure you know, is how Nico Dauphine, Peter Marra (her advisor at the National Zoo’s Migratory Bird Center), and eight others described TNR in their letter to Conservation Biology last year.
More to the point, though, there are several studies (I’ve listed them numerous times on my blog) that demonstrate the potential of TNR. I’ve also addressed your suggestion that feeding cats increases their numbers. Your “basic biology” sounds great, but assumes that without handouts from humans, these cats would somehow disappear.
But, where there are humans, there’s food to be found. In fact, even where there are no people, cats don’t starve.
On Marion Island—barren and uninhabited—it took 19 years to eradicate approximately 2,200 cats. Their only human provision: “the carcasses of 12,000 day-old chickens” each injected with the poison sodium monofluoroacetate (Bester et al., 2002). (The rest—the vast majority—were killed through the introduction of feline distemper, intensive hunting and trapping, and dogs (Bloomer & Bester, 1992) and (Bester et al., 2002)).
And then there are the researchers in Brooklyn who found that “supplemental feeding” had no “significant effect on population density,” because available food supplies—again, mostly garbage—already exceeded what the cats required (Calhoon & Haspel, 1989).
If you’re implying that trap-and-kill is the answer, please provide examples of where this has proven effective.
Peter J. Wolf
voxfelina[dot]com
Comment from Anne’n'Spencer
Time October 28, 2011 at 3:28 pm
I don’t think Best Friends is ignoring the science. If you read the quote, they’re saying that leaving poison around is a bad idea. And I think they’re absolutely right about that. Kids, pets, and wild animals are all at risk.
Comment from Esteban
Time October 28, 2011 at 4:07 pm
It’s not trap and kill. It’s trap, evaluate, adopt and/or euthanize….and it’s worked at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Gilbert Riparian Reserve, my backyard. Peter, point me to studies NOT conducted by TNR practitioners that effectively addressed the removal part of their TNR. Because most TNR is actually Trap and Remove (adoptables and kittens). IT took 19 years to eradicate 2,200 cats. How long has it taken for TNR to take a 2000 cat population to 350? And how much money did that take? ORCAT. If we can’t Trap and kill our way out of this do you really think we can tnr our way out of this? I KNOW that trap and remove saves more lives. Just not cat lives. Do you deny that too? Do you believe cats don’t kill any wildlife?
Comment from Peter J. Wolf
Time October 28, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Esteban, we’ve been through this before. I don’t expect to change your mind, but there may be people reading this who are interested in actually looking at the research. So…
You want studies conducted by TNR opponents? Here’s one: Over the course of approximately 300 hours of observation (this, in addition to what the researchers described as “several months identifying, describing, and photographing each of the cats living in the colonies” (Castillo & Clarke, 2003) prior to beginning their research), Castillo and Clarke “saw cats kill a juvenile common yellowthroat and a blue jay. Cats also caught and ate green anoles [lizards], bark anoles, and brown anoles. In addition, we found the carcasses of a gray catbird and a juvenile opossum in the feeding area” (Castillo & Clarke, 2003).
All of which suggests that “subsidizing” the cats may benefit wildlife. The cats eradicated from islands (mentioned previously) rarely had any such “subsidies,” and survived just fine.
As to cost, consider eradication efforts on Ascension Island (34 square miles, and a population <1,000), located in the South Atlantic Ocean: ~635 cats killed over 27 months at a cost of $1.1M (in 2011 dollars) (Ratcliffe et al., 2010). Are you suggesting that ORCAT has that kind of funding?
What about local municipalities? Mark Kumpf, former president of the National Animal Control Association, doesn’t think so. The traditional trap-and-kill approach is akin to “bailing the ocean with a thimble,” he explains in a 2008 interview with Animal Sheltering magazine. “There’s no department that I’m aware of that has enough money in their budget to simply practice the old capture-and-euthanize policy; nature just keeps having more kittens.”
If you have a better idea, you might contact NACA directly.
And finally, your backyard example is interesting only insofar as it illustrates your perspective—or lack of it.
Peter J. Wolf
http://www.voxfelina.com
Literature Cited
• Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/Neuter/Release Methods Ineffective in Controlling Domestic Cat "Colonies" on Public Lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23, 247–253.
• Ratcliffe, N., Bell, M., Pelembe, T., Boyle, D., Benjamin, R., White, R., et al. (2010). The eradication of feral cats from Ascension Island and its subsequent recolonization by seabirds. Oryx, 44(01), 20–29.
Comment from Maria
Time October 29, 2011 at 6:59 am
Esteban, you’re missing the point. It’s not only cruel and cowardly to poison animals that are behaving the way nature created them, it’s ILLEGAL. She commited a crime. It doesn’t matter what you think.
Comment from Esteban
Time October 31, 2011 at 8:23 am
Maria,
“She committed a crime”? I thought that was for the judge to decide? And, where did I say anything about justifying poisoning?
Peter,
Subsidizing predators affects the population size. Where are the studies regarding that aspect? No one as far as I know has conducted a study looking at OVERALL population reduction in an area via TNR vs Trap and Remove. When Animal Control takes away the ability for citizens to remove a cat from there property, wildlife loses. I really don’t care about TNR on your own property. It does not affect me, and as the The American Veterinary Medical Association put it “…the reduction in the total number of free-roaming cats these programs will effect is insignificant.”
ORCAT HAS spent a million dollars over that time.
Come on Peter just admit it. You believe cats have a right to be outside regardless of where they occur…..state park, wildlife refuge, other people’s back yards, and behind strip malls and restaurants. Is that NOT true? I (and others) believe cats are non-native, and deserve to be inside homes NOT outside preying on native animals and taking prey away from native predators. You try to justify your position by saying the numbers are wrong. I say the numbers don’t matter. Conservationists try to reduce anthropogenic mortality from all sources. We start with habitat, protecting what we can, managing habitat, analyzing and making recommendations on avoiding collisions (windows, windmills), and YES reducting mortality from cats. Municipalities have a responsibility to protect human heath. They are bombarded by dubious science from your side (vacuum effect…come on Peter!, territoriality in the colonies?, and the biggest one…population reduction). Your side just keeps saying…well the numbers WOULD go down if we had more money and more volunteers. That’s not working. If your side stops fighting trap and remove, my side could mobilize the volunteers necessary to do more widescale trap and remove and then let’s see what happens.
I know you bring up Ascension Island in regards to cost, but are you unhappy that those cats are gone and rare seabirds have returned?
Comment from smoketoomuch
Time October 31, 2011 at 11:32 am
Interesting argument, but I have what I think is a better idea: let’s STOP releasing (maybe “Abandoning” would be a better word) pet felines. It’s really all about “Personal Responsibility”. You buy (or adopt ) a pet – you have a responsibility to that animal for the rest of it’s natural life, anything less is morally wrong. Just my 2 cents.
Comment from Esteban
Time October 31, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Smoketoomuch. Mandatory micro-chipping does exactly that! But TNR advocates protest this and mandatory spay & neuter because they say people won’t take their pets to the vet if there are mandatory things they are required to do. BUT, you get around this by making these things mandatory at the time of adoption or sale.
Comment from Maria
Time October 31, 2011 at 5:42 pm
GUILTY! The judge has decided.
Comment from smoketoomuch
Time November 2, 2011 at 10:19 am
Esteban- I’m all for mandatory microchipping AND mandatory Spay & Neuter programs. (MY own pets have always been neutered and my Pomeranian is both microchipped and spayed. But then , I am a responsible pet owner, who would never even consider abandoning a defenseless animal who wants only to be cared for and loved. Too many of us apparently take pet ownership far too casually. What is wrong with people today?
Comment from Sam
Time December 9, 2011 at 1:30 am
Esteban, you and your colleagues get paid to promote these worn out, discredited arguments. Peter Wolf and feral cat advocates like him do not, and as a result are far more credible and persuasive. In fact, your core argument is laughable: “cats are non-native.” Feral cats were introduced to Macquarie Island around 1820, and by 2000 had become so ecologically essential that their extermination caused an “ecosytem meltdown” as the island was overrun with rabbits and rodents. Feral cats were introduced to the Americas by European colonists as far back as the 1600’s, and have become even more essential due to the loss of apex predators in most areas of the US. A hundred years ago, bobcats, lynx, and mountain lions were the top predators in my neck of the woods. Due to environmental degradation caused by humans, their ecological role has now been relegated to coyotes and feral cats. Most people would choose mesopredators over exploding rodent populations. And most people would rather have feral cats than coyotes roaming the woods around their homes. And finally, most people would just feel safer living around feral cat advocates such as Peter Wolf than gun-toting, poison-bearing ornithologists such as Jim Stevenson and Nico Dauphine.
Comment from Esteban
Time October 28, 2011 at 8:14 am
BTW, TNR is NOT the most efficient and cost-effective method. Feral populations have increased as TNR efforts have increased. The hidden secret of TNR is feeding cats 365/year regardless of whether they were fixed or not. Basic biology says fed animals reproduce at higher rates than hungry animals. So…any you don’t fix and that’s upwards of 50% in most colonies simply make up the difference from the few you do fix. TNR is “hoarding without walls.”