"He ran off with my husband's hearing aid"
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Her live line at rte.ie, the email address. I'm not sure if people saw this over the weekend, but an article from Ella McSweeney appeared in the Irish Times and it came with this headline. This killer pet has driven 73 species to extinction and roams free in Ireland. She is talking about the humble cat. She talks about domestic cats killing cats. billions of birds and mammals annually, about contributing to dozens of extinctions globally, about them carrying parasites and diseases and about the devastating impact they have on biodiversity and animal life and animal destruction in this country. Jim Wilson is on the line. Jim, you are one of the founding members of Harper's Island Wetlands. And Harper's Island Wetlands, it was the focus of a lot of this article because Ella McSweeney describes a little furry pet cat with a pink collar appearing to much dismay when these birds had migrated thousands of kilometres from Africa to reach this habitat.
What alarming impact do domestic cats have on wildlife?
Talk to me a little bit about... the problem that pet cats raise for you guys?
Yeah, Ciarán, nice to talk to you. Yeah, the Nature Reserve Harpers Island Wetlands has been in existence since 2017. And a housing estate went up across the road from the entrance some time ago. And since then, we've been noticing not many, two or three cats hunting or roaming on the nature reserve and it's not the first time we've had a cat take an interest in the nesting burrows that we have set up for these long distance migrants as you rightly pointed out and this time Alex Olinchik who's a regular visitor was there enjoying the sand martins and watching them come and go and next thing this cat appears and was able to leap and jump up and stick its head into a number of the burrows. And it does explain some phenomenon that we've been experiencing, especially this season.
This is the bottom row of three rows of nesting burrows. And we've noticed burrows being abandoned, you know, with eggs in them and things like that, which we didn't notice so much in previous years. And we now feel that it is probable that this cat or other cats were actually creating such a disturbance and when the birds are just starting to settle down, that's the time they're more likely to abandon this whole affair because it's not worth it. It's better to live till next year and have another family rather than risk being killed and that was the case. So, So that's where that came from. And Ella obviously must have seen it. We have a number of WhatsApp groups and social media presence as well.
And that's where that came from. And we couldn't believe it. So we've tried to put in a system to exclude the cats from doing this again. But I'm sure the owners are totally unaware, probably, of that. what their precious cat, which has a collar and a bell on it, is doing when it's not at home. This is a perfect example of that. And the thing is, that cat will not eat anything it catches. It'll either bring it to the owner, and we kind of say that it's giving it a present, the owner showing how good it is. But in this case, it's just following its ingrained instinct to hunt. And not all cats hunt. Some of them, we've had cats when I was growing up, always growing up, we had cats that wouldn't lift an eyebrow to a bird or even a fly or anything that was passing by.
And then we'd have another one and it would kill, you know, it would kill birds left, right and centre and we had to give it away to someone because it was just unbelievable the number of birds.
Jim, is that the nature of each individual cat? It's a character thing or is it a breed?
Well, it's kind of both in some ways, Ciarán. And, you know, like ourselves, we're all on a rainbow spectrum, you know, whatever you want to call it, continuum. Cats are no different. Some are docile and quiet and others are hyper and active. And this is what happens. But the thing is,
How do pet cats affect bird populations in nature reserves?
You know, we often hear, but this is nature. This is what nature is. That's true, but not in Ireland because we never had cats and they're not part of our wildlife, if you know what I mean.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:17
2
What alarming impact do domestic cats have on wildlife?
1:17–4:51
3
How do pet cats affect bird populations in nature reserves?
4:51–7:27
4
What challenges do nature reserves face with roaming cats?
7:27–12:20
5
How can cat owners minimize their pets' impact on wildlife?
12:20–17:07
6
What responsibilities do pet owners have for their cats?
17:07–23:53