Was talking to a neighbour yesterday as we collected our bins, when we saw a cat running from the reserve across the street, into a nearby yard (where it lives, presumably) through a gap in a fence. I said - 'damn, those killers are destroying a lot of our native animals - seen one emerge from a neighbour's woodshed with two skinks in its mouth. They shouldn't be allowed outside uncontrolled. Such a double standard vs. dogs.' She was horrified at my 'cruelty' saying it's just not right. 1/2
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@stephen @artnacrea @joncounts yeah, think we should probably start scheming how to play those fools. I'd back the ลtautahi Fediverse in a battle of wits with the CCC conservatives.
I've had the same expressed to me in N. America. I simply don't understand it. They decimate the local song bird population until some coyote comes along and eats them.
Not sure why feeding them to coyotes is the less cruel of the options to just keeping them inside...
I mean. If we just let all the dogs loose, that would at least be filling an ecological niche that we've deprived the local ecology of (by killing off all the wolves).
There are already native cats that do not need your domestic cats competing with them.
@lordbowlich Yup. The Australians have it even worse. Their fairly robust dingos (like a coyote, descended from 'New Guinea Singing Dogs', apparently) used to be able to handle the throngs of feral cats they have... but the cats have evolved into panther-sized felines, bigger than the dingos can manage. Doesn't bode well for AU biodiversity. There've been rumours of massive feral felines spotted in NZ, too, probably thought a similar process.
@lordbowlich yeah, hadn't considered the situation in my own home country (I'm an emigre from the USA), but I guess the colonial entitlement exists there at least as egregiously as it does here in NZ (and our neighbour AU)...
@lightweight My local council has just banned cats being outside between 7PM and 7AM and for future cats that are registered they are to be inside cats only.
@etbe I note for those who might not know, you're in Australia, right?
@lightweight Is cat ownership allowed in NZ!? That's...wild. Or maybe the opposite of wild?
@RachelThornSub It is, sadly, wild in all senses, and rampant. And 'cat lovers' are seen as a 'sacred cow' block politically. Don't get wrong - cats are stunning & I admire them as the ruthlessly efficient biodiversity destroyers they are. I just think humans made a grave error (one of countless) including them in the colonisation process. And yeah, as in AU, they should be required to be constrained to their owner's property & inside at night. That's everyone's expectations of dog owners.
@RachelThornSub cat owners would screem bloody murder if an unsupervised dog caught and killed their roaming/unsupervised cat. Yeah, it's be sad for all involved, but - to quote unapologetic cat lovers I know - 'that's just the natural order'.
Dogs are only constrained & require supervision because they might (well, a few) hurt humans, or kill livestock, i.e. affect the livestock owners in the pocket.
Both cat & dog poop is very undesirable. Toxoplasmosis in the veggies anyone?
@lightweight @RachelThornSub
It is worse than that. If your neighbour's cat comes into your back yard and your dog injures it, you have to compensate the cat owner (news item recently, $1000s).
So, better for the cat to 'disappear'.
@lightweight Here I had been thinking that cats were illegal in Australia, but I just checked and apparently there are rules but they aren't forbidden per se. It sounds like the laws were made to please a certain kind of person and ecosystem considerations were secondary.
It occurred to me then that *most* people seem to think that animals only have value - and deserve protection - if they're 'owned'. Indigenous, ambient wildlife has - in most people's minds ~zero (or even negative) value. The crucial, unique value of our biodiversity has *not* been well explained to the mainstream. What do you think? @joncounts
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@lightweight yes absolutely.
Thereโs a similar dynamic I think with the plant portion of the ecosystem although it that case itโs less about ownership and more aesthetic/tourism benefits to humans. The awe inspiring forests need protecting of course but here in Victoria, Australia some of our most significant biological diversity exists in grassland ecosystems youโd probably assume was a boring paddock if you drove right past them
@lightweight Interesting thread here. A lot of contradictory things are tangled up with NZers love of pet cats that they allow outside. (Indoor cats are great.)
Regarding your question about whether people most value the animals they can own, I think instead a lot of New Zealanders are empathetic to individual animals, wild or owned. That's mostly the animals that they see are are like us (bigger, smarter mammals like cats, dogs). Animals that fall into this circle of empathy generally get treated very well by us. Those that we can make money selling dead (sheep, cows, pigs) get treated a bit differently, but the recognised duty of care is still there.
Native birds still seem to be on the periphery for many people, although generation-by-generation birds are making their way into our circle of care. Hedgehogs (a pest) are still well inside the circle for many people. Lizards seem more on the edge still.
When it comes to plants and fungi and invertebrates (most of our indigenous biodiversity), the connection is not emotional and I don't think most people give these much thought at all.
@joncounts sadly, that tracks with my experience. Sigh.
@joncounts maybe we need to come up with compelling narratives of how biodiversity can benefit us all... (Grudgingly accepting most people won't care about anything if there's no personal upside. Which seriously sucks)
@lightweight That reminds me of Dan Janzenโs take on this, in the context of saving wild tropical forests and all of their extraordinary species. Itโs a pragmatic โuse it or lose itโ philosophy.
โWhy can't the wild tropical species be left โout in the wildโ to fend for themselves? Because the wild is at humanity's mercy. Humanity now owns life on Earth. It plans the world, albeit with an unintended here and an uninformed there. Until the Pleistocene, not more than a few thousandths of 1 percent of the Earth's surface was ours. Today it all is. If we place those species anywhere other than in a human safe zone, they will continue in their downward spiral as grist in the human mill, just as they have for the past 10,000 years.โ
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.279.5355.1312
#biodiversity #tropicalBiodiversity #conservation #BiodiversityCrisis #DanJanzen
@joncounts yes, that characterises succinctly my own devastating impression... we (humans) are so unworthy of holding that power.
@lightweight @joncounts I've got an impression that here in Wellington we've tipped the scales a little because of the great work with predator control in the city. There's a real sense of there being many more birds around which people seem to like in general. Although I do hear the occasional moan about how destructive kaka are!
And the Capital Kiwi project is hugely popular.
@artnacrea @joncounts I hear from folks working with petrol line trimmers on river boundaries and spraying herbicides around tree bases in our ลtautahi parks that they're doing so as a result of 'people complaining that the parks look scrappy'. Of course those practices are a) carbon intensive, b) polluting, and c) destroying important habitat... Makes me want to run campaigns to rewild many of our public spaces and stand up to those shallow prissy colonialists wanting everything manicured.
@lightweight @joncounts I think there's a difference between an invasive species - which, so far as I know, the the cat is, in New Zealand - and indigenous wildlife.
And I think indigenous - and unowned - wildlife is valued in a lot of places, including especially here in Canada.
@Downes @joncounts great to hear it. We have lots of lip service and iconography (all our $ and brands celebrate our native wildlife) here in Aotearoa NZ, but far too little actual conservation of our 'taonga' (sacred/unique) species and the habitat they require to thrive. Still LOTS of implicit colonial privilege and 'business profits' > 'right to exist' thinking going on.
@lightweight @joncounts With one of the higgest rates of cat ownership inthe world we have some way to go before we get a Cat Act that complements our Dog Act.
But we will get there!
@artnacrea @joncounts let us quietly marshal our forces. Softly softly or something like that ๐
