Clovis and Cat Hunting
by Giulianna LamannaThousands of years ago, humans crossed the Beringia land bridge into North America. On April 11, 2005, the Wisconsin Conservation Congress voted to classify feral cats as an “unprotected species,” thereby making it legal to hunt them. What do these events have to do with each other? Well, let’s see.
In the 1930s, a group of archaologists discovered distinctly human tools and mammoth bones in Clovis, New Mexico: the first solid evidence that humans came to the Americas during the Ice Age, and therefore had arrived over 11,000 years ago.1 The real shocker, though, came later, as more and more archeologists in North and Central America found flint spear points that looked exactly like the Clovis blades. They were also dated to be around the same time period, despite being hundreds of miles away from each other. Were non-Clovis cultures adopting the Clovis spear point? Or did the Clovis people fill up an entire continent in an astonishingly short period of time?
The latter certainly seems feasible. Whenever a species enters a new environment, its population explodes until it fills the area’s carrying capacity. Everything that can be eaten will be eaten, and every space that can be filled up will be filled up. (This is why you can’t bring animals or plants across national borders.) Residents of rural and suburban areas always know when deer hunting season is: first, deer are everywhere. You can’t turn around without seeing a deer. Deer are eating all your plants. Then, hunting season.
Which brings us to cat hunting in Wisconsin. The logic behind it is mainly that the feral cat population is out of control and is responsible for killing off millions of birds per year. But will killing them actually help anything? Just after deer hunting season, the deer population suffers a slight decrease in numbers, only to explode again later on in the year. Indeed, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 300 stray cats were neutered and adopted into good homes. Two years later, 300 stray cats were living in Newburyport. And because these were the offspring of cats too quick, clever, and distrustful of humans to be trapped, these new strays were even harder to catch than the original bunch.
Minnesota, where it’s already legal to shoot feral cats, has already discovered that hunting doesn’t do much to control population in the long run. Mike Fry, head of Twin Cities-based Animal Ark, explained the problem to Minnesota Public Radio: “We hear from farmers and property owners of all kinds that they have been trying fatal means to manage the population, and it simply doesn’t work. Because even if a couple survive, you’ll have a large number of cats in no time.”
Perhaps the hunters of Wisconsin could kill 1.4 million cats, but could they successfully eliminate… an INFINITE number of cats?!?! Okay, so maybe they won’t breed quite that much. But damn close to it. The fact remains: wherever Wisconsin can support feral cats, feral cats will breed and flourish. Just as a few families coming from Siberia into Alaska rapidly filled up an entire continent, a group of feral cats - however small - will rush to meet their environment’s carrying capacity. A more effective and humane solution has been in use by a number of animal shelters and animal control agencies: trap, neuter, release. Neutering and spaying stray cats prevents them from breeding again without worrying about finding good homes for them. (Millions of cats are put to sleep each year because no one will adopt them.)
But natural selection and population density issues aside, the most egregious flaw in the cat-hunters’ argument is glaringly obvious. Cats are just too damn cute to hunt. End of story.
Footnotes:
1. Although the Clovis people have long been considered the first humans in the Americas, no one knows exactly who the first Americans were. Just last year, an archaeological excavation in South Carolina uncovered evidence that people were living there as early as 50,000 years ago. Previous finds in Monteverde, Chile, Virginia, and Pennsylvania have also shown evidence that the Clovis people were not necessarily the first - or only - humans in the Western hemisphere.
The resiliency of prey populations is a good thing, though. It guarantees a continuous supply of delicious cat meat …. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … delicious cat meat….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 April 2005 @ 12:05 PM
Wait, they’re not in it for the cat meat?
….
Can I have the cat meat?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 April 2005 @ 12:09 PM
This is a funny story. Hereâ??s a little more analysis.
CNNâ??s article says there are an estimated 2 million feral cats killing between 47 to 139 million birds annually (from this can we estimate that it takes between 23 and 69 birds to keep a cat alive for a year?).
How many cats will the average cat hunter kill? Taking a stab, say 20. Why would someone want more than 20 dead cats?
To target the total estimated cat population (assuming 20 kills per hunter) would take about 100,000 hunters. There are about 5.3 million people in the state of Wisconsin. That means that almost 2% of the stateâ??s population will have to take up cat hunting as a hobby in order for this to be successful.
Whatâ??s the â??valueâ?? of an effort like this? Assuming it takes, oh, 5 minutes to hunt a cat it would take about 10 million minutes, or 166,667 hours to hunt all of these cats (6,944 full days). At the Federal minimum wage of $5.15 the â??valueâ?? of time spent hunting cats would come to be about $858,333. And thatâ??s just for the first hunt. One plus for the state is that a market for cat hunting accessories would crop up (like bait shops around lakes). Maybe they would have maps to where lots of cats are; that would be neat.
As you pointed out, without complete eradication the problem will continue. If eradication was successful what would they do about the songbird problem?
As for the meat, Iâ??ve never had cat. I did live on a farm as a child (I prefer the term ranch but my wife says otherwise) and besides normal livestock we did occasionally eat rabbit (which we raised).
Iâ??m also wondering if they are going to fence off the state borders (it would need to be a very high fence, upwards of 8-10 feet) to keep out cats from neighboring states. Maybe stock the non-Wisconsin side with cat toys to distract them from jumping the fence.
I understand the need for deer hunting considering how humans have impacted their ecosystem. Large cats and other predators controlled deer populations before we moved in. What controlled the cat population? They would seem to be the top of their little evolutionary chain (disregarding humans) given their hunting skills and stealth abilities.
Shoot, this got longer than I expectedâ?¦
CNN Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/12/killing.wildcats.ap/index.html
Wisconsin Population:
http://www.50states.com/wisconsi.htm
Federal Minimum Wage:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm
Comment by JWT — 13 April 2005 @ 1:08 PM
You don’t think humans have impacted the lives of domesticated cats? If that’s the rationale for hunting deer, then hunting cats is even better, since I don’t think they’re even native to North America.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 April 2005 @ 1:14 PM
I am Chris` aching, off-topic kidney.
Would you consider adding the author name for a single article mode to the page itself? When I get to this page from an RSS feed, I can’t tell who the author is. In this case I made the mistake of assuming it was Jason and when I got the comments section, was slightly confused by the (quite possible but unlikely) prospect that he was commenting copiously on his own article.
Thanks,
Chris
P.S. If we use cuteness as a justification for ignoring a creature’s suitability as a target of pursuit, I can think of some problems we’re gonna have down the road.
Comment by Chris Hardie — 13 April 2005 @ 1:44 PM
Good suggestion, Chris. It’s done.
… y’know, I’ll bet that’s why Robby got so confussled over my “anonymity.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 April 2005 @ 2:09 PM
It seems like this problem could be abated by a two-pronged strategy of introducing feral dogs, and poisonous feral mice.
Comment by Anonymous — 14 April 2005 @ 10:01 AM
SKINNER: (Upon finding out that the lizards he wanted to wipe out ate pigeon eggs) Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA: But isn’t that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we’re overrun by lizards?
SKINNER: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They’ll wipe out the lizards.
LISA: But aren’t the snakes even worse?
SKINNER: Yes, but we’re prepared for that. We’ve lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA: But then we’re stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER: No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 14 April 2005 @ 10:47 AM
Hm. You know, if civilization does go up in smoke, at least where I live, I’ll have access to plenty of cat and rattlesnake meat!
Now if only I could figure out what to do with the migrating gorillas.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 18 April 2005 @ 3:02 AM
Hey i think they should put up a price likek $0.25 for a cat. The do this in Alberta Canada to controll the goffer pop. it seems to work for them.
Comment by Tyson — 22 July 2005 @ 9:54 PM