The No Kill Advocacy Center and
Stray Cat Alliance filed an
emergency motion in Los Angeles
Superior Court today asking the
court to allow them to intervene as
Defendants in the case of Urban
Wildlands Group vs. City of Los
Angeles (LASC BS115483).
Urban Wildlands and other groups
sued the City of Los Angeles and its
Department of Animal Services for
attempting to work with community
groups and non-profit organizations
whose missions are focused on
protection of free-roaming
(homeless, stray, and unsocialized
“feral”) cats. These programs help
reduce the population of
free-roaming cats and prevent
impounds in the City’s seven animal
shelters where thousands of healthy
cats and kittens are killed
annually.
The plaintiffs claim that stray cats
harm the ecosystem by preying on
birds. In December, the Superior
Court ordered the City of Los
Angeles to cease all work with
community groups that work to
prevent shelter killing of
free-roaming cats through the
sterilization method known as
Trap-Neuter-Return (“TNR”). As a
result of the ruling, the City can
no longer inform the public about
TNR services available in the
community. The ruling will result in
thousands of cats being needlessly
killed at taxpayer expense in City
shelters, while doing virtually
nothing to stem any perceived loss
of bird life.
If the motion to intervene is
granted, both No Kill Advocacy
Center and Stray Cat
Alliance —whose missions
include saving the lives of free
roaming and feral cats in Los
Angeles and other communities—will
be able to seek modification and
appeal of the court’s order.
“This ruling does nothing to save
birds, while threatening to
needlessly kill cats at taxpayer
expense. We cannot allow this ruling
to force the City to turn back the
clock on shelter policies to the
dark days of ‘catch and kill’ being
the official policy,” said Christi
Metropole, Executive Director of
Stray Cat Alliance. “At the
same time, the ruling does not
affect the real cause for bird
species decline, namely human
encroachment, human activities,
human pollution and use of toxic
pesticides.”
According to Nathan J. Winograd,
Director of the national No Kill
Advocacy Center, “the court’s
broad ruling failed to consider
several points of fact and law that
we are prepared to present as
defendants in the action. We believe
that had the court considered these
points, it would not have issued
this misguided ruling. In fact,
parts of the ruling conflict with
state law and oversteps the court’s
authority over the legislative
branch of government.”
Winograd also said that, “Blaming
animals who cannot defend themselves
gives the environmental groups the
appearance of working to find a
solution to bird decline, but their
opposition to TNR is
counterproductive to the cause they
claim to represent. An end to
information about TNR will cause
increases in feral cat populations
because when the only option is
killing, people will not ask for
assistance with these cats. A recent
national study found that over 80%
of people surveyed consider it more
ethical to leave a cat out on the
street than to turn the cat over to
animal control to be killed. And for
those feral cats who do end up at
the shelter, their killing is a
tragic certainty.”
"We will not allow them (cats) to
get killed," said Metropole.
The No Kill Advocacy Center
is a national not-for-profit
organization dedicated to ending the
systematic killing of animals in
U.S. shelters. Stray Cat
Alliance is dedicated to ending
the killing of cats in and around
Los Angeles. The No Kill
Advocacy Center and Stray
Cat Alliance are represented by
the national law firm of Akin Gump
Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Los
Angeles.
♦
Facts about
TNR
Fact:
TNR reduces feral cat
populations and it does so humanely.
Urban Wildlands and
the other environmental groups claim
they are opposed to TNR because they
care about birds and want to reduce
the number of feral cats in Los
Angeles who prey on birds. This is
false.
An multi-year study
in Ohio found that cat impounds and
deaths were increasing at all those
shelters, and feral cats were most
at risk of being killed, except for
those with sterilization programs.
In addition, a survey of San
Francisco cat colonies in the 1990s
found that every single one at which
a TNR program was implemented saw
population numbers decline. This is
consistent with national and
regional studies which found that
80% of owned pet cats were already
sterilized, and that any attempts to
increase the proportion of neutered
cats in the United States must
include stray and feral cats. In
order to reduce cat numbers, cat
impounds, cat deaths, and by
extension, any perceived bird
predation, it is important to
sterilize the feral population,
since the alternative is not removal
of feral cats, but doing nothing.
Municipalities do not engage in
large scale cat removal campaigns,
nor do they generally engage in
direct TNR efforts. But in
partnering with groups that do,
calls about stray cats, cat
impounds, cat deaths, and the number
of free roaming cats decline.
Fact:
Cats do not
impact bird populations.
A consensus of the
scientific literature, independent
of those promulgated by special
interest advocacy organizations such
as those that make up the
petititioning environmental groups
in this case, have exonerated cats
in any bird decline on continents,
and identify a different cause:
habitat destruction by humans.
Another major culprit is the use of
pesticides—particularly toxic lawn
care products, insecticides,
fungicides, and rodenticides. Other
studies point to drought, forest
fragmentation, and trapping by
humans. Unless we conclude that
predation studies conducted on four
continents are all wrong, feral cats
should no longer be unfairly
implicated in any decimation of bird
populations.
♦
Cats,
Birds & The Law
Save the Date! Join Nathan Winograd
in Los Angeles on March 30 for a
two-hour seminar on cats, predation,
and the law at the Los Angeles
County Bar Association. Attorneys
and paralegals eligible for two
hours of CLE credit. Non-attorneys
welcome. The seminar will be
followed by a book signing for his
new book, Irreconcilable
Differences. All proceeds from
the sales of books benefit the
lifesaving work of Stray Cat
Alliance.
