Over at the Earth in Transition blog, Michael Mountain, one of the founders of the "No Kill" movement, writes about the latest study which shows that free-ranging domestic cats in America kill 1.4–3.7 BILLION birds and 6.9–20.7 BILLION mammals annually:
Why would we be surprised by any of this? Wasn't it their hunting ability that led cats to become our best friends in the first place?
Read the whole thing, but I applaud the fact that Mountain notes that the collateral killing of wildlife by abandoned pets is not limited to cats:
Currently, in Florida, we have another wildlife catastrophe on our hands. Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons (some say up to 180,000) are loose in the Everglades as a result of criminally irresponsible "pet owners" and former breeders dumping their unwanted "pets" out in the wild. Pythons grow very large – up to 17 feet long – and can swallow a deer for dinner. A female python can have up to a hundred eggs. Entire populations of rabbits and foxes have disappeared from the Everglades, and populations of raccoons, opossums and bobcats have dropped as much as 99 percent.
Right.
And what is Florida doing about feral Burmese pythons?
Well, for one thing, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has launched a hunting competition with cash prizes to people who can kill the most pythons. "No license or experience needed -- just a gun or a knife."
Notice that no one has objected to that!
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