This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Cat predation on wildlife article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Cat predation on wildlife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.alleycat.org/document.doc?id=634When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:20, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
reading this, it seems that the cat fans are mounting a dis information campaign very similar to the climage change denialist or the tobacco does't cause cancer croud any thoughts ? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-018-1796-y — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:4701:BE80:519D:9181:46A7:996D ( talk) 13:21, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
I just deleted the pet owners section, I believe Wikipedia isn’t here to try to change minds on subjects and I think that the wording of the section was rather pointed at “convincing” people of how bad cats can be outdoors. Along with the reference to cognitive dissonance which just feels cliche, the fact that one journal piece is used, the whole thing needs to be rewritten if it wants to stay up IMO. 2601:1C0:5A00:4650:F0BC:F4F4:A6E2:92DC ( talk) 20:02, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
Please tell me why you have deleted my edit about the claim that domestic cats have exterminated 33 (bird) species. The claim is false and I posted a reference about it. Please reinstate my edit immediately.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Strippedsocks ( talk • contribs)
Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv, are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.There was no evidence it was published in a journal later, and no evidence that the author is a recognized expert that would satisfy WP:SPS. Note that claiming that the IUCN is wrong about the number of species exterminated by cats, which seems to be the argument you're making here, is going to require excellent sourcing. Geogene ( talk) 13:02, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
@
Strippedsocks:, This edit
[2] is
original research because the sources in it don't mention cats. The subject of this article is
Cat predation on wildlife, not extinction as a general phenomenon. Additionally in your edit summary you write, They have not exterminated 33 bird species, as I prove in my preprint, which it seems must wait until it is published in a journal
. Your preprint? This implies that a
WP:SELFCITE issue is presenting itself here as well.
Geogene (
talk)
15:35, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2022 and 22 December 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Nprocaccini,
Jeanius1,
Planariaworm (
article contribs). Peer reviewers:
KMorales34,
Ablip,
Lonelychild1.
— Assignment last updated by Chelsei.L ( talk) 22:43, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
It's inevitable that there will be some coverage of feral cat management strategies, but I don't think this article should be a WP:Coatrack for that. And recent additions in that aspect are problematic because they frame management options as a dichotomy between Trap-Neuter-Return and otherwise undiscussed "trap euthanize" options. In reality, cats are managed in many different ways, through toxic baits [7], [8]; hunting with air rifles [9], automated poison spray stations [10], with genetic engineering methods (gene drives) probably coming down the pipeline [11]. Turning everything into TNR verses Trap Euthanize is WP:UNDUE. But if we're going to mention TNR, the main point is that it should a minimum reflect the apparent scientific consensus that TNR does not work. [12] Geogene ( talk) 20:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
This is not correct? It says in the article linked to this claim:
"Estimates of annual US bird mortality from predation by all cats, including both owned and un-owned cats, are in the hundreds of millions13,14 (we define un-owned cats to include farm/barn cats, strays that are fed by humans but not granted access to habitations, cats in subsidized colonies and cats that are completely feral). This magnitude would place cats among the top sources of anthropogenic bird mortality; however, window and building collisions have been suggested to cause even greater mortality15,16,17. Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation are speculative and not based on scientific data13,14,15,16 or, at best, are based on extrapolation of results from a single study18. In addition, no large-scale mortality estimates exist for mammals, which form a substantial component of cat diets." Kirschn ( talk) 08:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.[13]. Now, parsing the text you quoted with my annotations
estimates of annual bird mortality [MADE PREVIOUSLY BY OTHERS] are in the hundreds of millions...however window and building collisions have been suggested [BY OTHERS] to cause even greater mortality [CITES TO OTHERS' WORK]....Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation [BY OTHERS] are speculative and not based on scientific data....There is no contradiction here, although the Wiki article may state the claim more strongly than the source presents it. Geogene ( talk) 14:32, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
"...after humans".. surely? Holocene_extinction JeffUK 07:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned with recent efforts to suggest that the article has "too few opinions", namely in support of the notion that pet cats are not a signficant contribution to the problem, which is not at all what the sources are telling us. It's correct that Loss et al. (2013) pinned most of it in a specific place on feral populations, but that study certainly did not rule out the contribution of free-roaming (indoor-outdoor and outdoor-only) pet cats, and other sources certainly don't exclude them, either. And this article is not about feral cat predation on wildlife, but all Felis catus predation on wildlife. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Why was my contribution deleted? It was about cats striking fear into their prey. Please explain. The article without my paragraph strongly suggests that cats are unique in striking fear into prey and therefore that cats are evil. The paragraph I added puts cats in perspective, showing that they are not unique because all predators, even humans, induce fear in prey animals. You always delete my edits such that it is pointless trying to make the page better than just the c-rated and biased article it is. We will have to have a wider discussion about this article and why it is impossible to improve it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xhkvfq (talk • contribs) 18:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Please see: Draft:Cat predation on islands and Draft:Human–cat conflict. These are not viable drafts, but they contain a variety of sources that might be usable here in a WP:DUE manner. The entire gist of both drafts can probably be summed up in a single paragraph here along the lines that claims about the specific number of species extincted by cats has been subject to some debate, both because some turned out to have been pushed to the brink of extinction but not quite over that cliff, and because of definitional disputes about "species". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
In user-talk, Xhkvfq has finally come up with a source (one) in support of their position, "I still stand firmly by my statement that the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance." It is this:
This is a rebuttal piece to the following:
Xhkvfq didn't mention (perhaps didn't know about) refutation of the Lynn et 2019 work above:
Most of Lynn et al. published later a response to that as well:
While Conservation Biology appears to be a reputable journal by the journal metrics I just looked up, and it is not listed at WP:RSNP as problematic, that particular article is neither a work of primary-research science nor a secondary literature review (which would be much more valuable than the former). It is an opinion editorial, clearly labelled an essay, and it is polemical in nature. Its very title is an accusation that people who disagree with the authors are engaged in a moral panic, and the authors do nothing even in their abstract to disguise the fact that they are advancing a colleague-condemnatory opinion: "Some conservationists ... claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. ... we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic ... it is a false analogy to compare [us] with corporate and right-wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change." In short, it's a butt-hurt rant about the tone of and the analogy used by two of their ideological opponents, namely Loss & Marra 2018 (another opinion piece, not the Loss & Marra 2017 research paper we already cite in our article). The authors are correct that Loss & Marra used a bogus analogy against them, but this has absolutely nothing of any kind to do with the underlying science, and is only about collegiality in academic publishing (which the authors of this essay are of course also failing at dismally, perpetuating the mudslinging to push their "protect the kitties" agenda instead of sticking to the science).
The essay does not in detail address anything like the broad body of research in this area. It does go to some pains to criticize cats-as-a-rabies-vector and toxoplasmosis as they relate to humans, but this really has nothing to do with our subject, since ours is not an article about zoonotic cat–human disease transfer (our only disease material here is about cat–wildlife transfer). Indeed, after the "screw Loss & Marra" ranting that takes up the entire first half of the essay, the bulk of the remaining material is about human zoonosis (and fears thereof), not about cat predation on, or spread of diseases to, wildlife.
This essay is problematic in its content in other ways. E.g., "there are significant ... ethical and policy issues ... relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife": This is pure, unadulterated socio-political positioning, and has nothing to do with scientific facts at all. It's advocacy. The so-called conclusion, "Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free-ranging cats", is just empty buzzword-laden rhetoric that has no implications for our article or any of its sources. There is no demonstrable evidence of lack of "collaboration", nor any evidence that the scientific data (aside from nitpicks one might have with very particular papers) is wrong; certainly the preponderance of it is not. "Ethical knowledge" is undefinable gibberish (like "moral fact" or "upstanding data" or "conscientious observation" or "respectable information"; it is confusing two different categories of things and producing an oxymoron).
It also, in its more substantive parts, is not aiming in the direction Xhkvfq seems to believe it is: "There are good ... reasons ... to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster ... in all circumstances." This a) does nothing whatsoever to dispel evidence that free-ranging cats are disastrous in many circumstances, and b) has nothing to do with the claims in our article, or even the claims in the sources used in that article, since neither are using any "in all circumstances" language. In short, it's a straw man. More to the point, though, on p. 773: "[Our] skepticism should not be used to deny the impact cats may have when rigorously documented for specific contexts." The authors are telling us directly not to try to misuse their essay in the way Xhkvfq seems to want to misuse it. And more yet: "We welcome calls for the adoption of a precautionary approach, when it involves the implementation of mitigation measures that are not harmful, and monitoring and adaptive management". That is, the authors support extirpation if it comes to that, as long as a "harm-reduction" path is tried first, and here and several other places they urge for ethics monitoring of extirpation efforts. (The thing is, "mitigation" or harm-reduction measures already have been tried, again and again, in multiple ways, and have not worked.)
If this essay turns out to be demonstrably influential (notable authors, cited a lot, covered in the press, etc.), then there might be a WP:DUE reason to mention it as a considered opinion in the topic area, directly attributed to the authors, not stated by us as if the opinion is demonstrable fact. However, to the extent any of it is actually generalizable to the topic instead of being anger with Loss & Marra, or kumbaya "be sweet to all the creatures" stuff, this seems to be a fringe viewpoint. They're basically accusing their ideological opponents of engaging in a pseudo-scientific conspiracy (and in smear campaigning, meanwhile the authors of the essay are themselves smearing other academics, who mostly actually have much better claim to that term). As for notable authors, we have no articles on any them, except Barbara J. King, a former academic anthropologist who is now a pop-science writer – someone writing entirely outside their own field. Of the others, two are directly associated with "predator protection" stance-taking bodies; one is Carnivore Coexistence Lab [19] which has no expertise in anything but protecting native wolf populations in the US; and Centre for Compassionate Conservation [20] which is also focused on wildlife and has nothing to do with domestic species (beyond putting out a position paper against using an infertility drug on Australian feral horses – specifically opposing a bill to outlaw culling them, I might add). Neither of these organizations have anything to do with management of feral cat populations or reducing their wildlife impact. Oh, doing some more background research, there's a third: PAN Works [21], "a nonprofit think tank dedicated to the wellbeing of animals" to "cultivate compassion, respect and justice for animals, a reverence for the community of life, and a desire for people, animals and nature to thrive together. ... a global platform for ethicists, scholars and civil society working to improve animal wellbeing." So, very clearly an advocacy not research group. Oh, and there's another one: Project Coyote [22]: an advocacy group around human coexistence with coyotes (and bears and other native predators that actually belong in their environments), with a particular focus on "reforming predator management", which is a clear bias; but no connection to feral cats. Another was formerly with the the Humane Society of the US which is obviously an advocacy body, but also with US Wildlife Protection Program, so at least able to see both sides; yet also closely associated with WellBeing International [23], which "envisions people, animals and the environment thriving in a healthy and harmonious world", i.e. another advocacy organization.
"As ethicists and scientists who value the lives of individual animals as well as the preservation of biodiversity, we recognize that non-native species may, in specific circumstances, pose a threat to native wildlife" is key for two reasons: it establishes clearly that the piece is based in an "ethics" moralizing position not just science (if you think that's a stretch, the very next sentence says "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"). They continue more bluntly and emotively and personally condemnatory in this same direction: "the harming of sentient, sapient, and social individuals, such as cats, that Loss and Marra (2018) ... countenance requires strict ethical and scientific scrutiny". This is a piece of regulatory advocacy aimed directly at colleagues they disapprove of. Secondly, it also makes clear that, despite this angle, it is not actually a refutation of the premise of non-native cats' deleterious effects on native wildlife to begin with, and that matters very much here.
The more I read of the actual content in the essay, the more apparent it is that it is in large part confused, activistic nonsense. I'm shocked this actually got published in any journal at all (even an ethics one, which might have made more sense). It makes obviously nonsensical arguments, such as that because any predator can have something of a population suppressive effect on its prey species, that overwhelming evidence of cats wiping out or nearly wiping out various species in environments in which cats are invasive, and killing literally billions of birds and other small animals per year in general, somehow cannot be distinguished from native-species predation in any environment. This is, to put it bluntly, complete horseshit. And here's a double straw man: "it may be tempting to appeal to a precautionary approach that would argue that even if the impact of freeranging cats on nature and society is not settled science, we should take action to reduce or eliminate outdoor cats as a matter of precaution." Not only is there no non-fringe doubt at all about such cats' impact, no one (that we know of, covered with reliable sources in our article) has advanced any such precautionary "just kill them all now, just in case" idea; it's pure scare-tactic argument to emotion. In reality, culling of all feral cats (and rats, and foxes, and some other species) has been advocated (by anyone notable enough to quote) only in closed ecosystems like various islands. And programs to do this have been remarkably successful. One of the closing sentences in the essay (p. 774) is particularly rich: "Finally, we urge everyone concerned with free-ranging cats to reject framing this debate as a matter of us versus them." The entire point of their piece is castigating and questioning the ethics of Loss & Marra, a textbook case of "us versus them".
I do not believe this essay has any implications of any kind for this Wikipedia article. It is primarily a tit-for-tat personality dispute, mired in a "don't shoot feral cats because that's mean" emotive position, and confused cavilling about what the actual science is saying and on what basis, plus a pretense that more "collaboration" is needed when there is no independent evidence of any lack thereof (all they have to support the idea is a quote from a conference calling for a "consensus on how to manage conflicts with outdoors cats", which is a call for collaboration on regulatory solutions not a claim of lack of collaboration in the science). In short, this is not a science article of any kind, it is a socio-poltical opinion piece about what to do at the public policy level and how to arrive at that decision, and what voices should count (not Loss & Marra!) – what the authors call an "ethical dialogue that has just begun". It is not about the science question of what the facts of invasive cat predation are. The only even slight potential I can see this essay having with regard to our article is brief mention in the "Feral cat population management" section, but only along with analysis and summary of the position the authors are railing against (Loss & Marra 2018, Marra & Santella 2016, and a few others they cite by name), and post-publication rebuttal of this essay by others (Crespin et al. 2020). Remember that Loss & Marra themselves wrote "cat population management is traditionally contentious"; this essay is simply proof of it. Something from Lynn's own official bio: "specializes in animal and sustainability ethics as they interface with public policy. Exploring why and how we ought to care for people, animals and nature, this is practical research translating insights from his interdisciplinary training in ethics, geography and political theory into public dialogues over moral problems." Advocacy not science. Here's a key example from the essay that is also a fringe position: "the intrinsic value of all animals (wild and domestic) in conservation". Domestic and invasive animals have no "instrinic value" within conservation whatsoever, by definition. Conservation is about protection of a natural environment from invasive species and other anthropogenic disturbance and destruction. The authors have taken an idea from the philosophical ethics of the animal-rights platform (and vegan activism for that matter), "the intrinsic value of all animals", and glued it onto a field, conservation, that is not based on that idea at all and in fact mostly supports efforts to extirpate invasive species from environments in which they do not naturally belong! (Re-quote: "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"; the authors are angry at conservationists for not holding the authors' viewpoint that feral cats are "precious", but trying through verbal sleight-of-hand to stick this viewpoint onto them anyway as if they'll aborb it by osmosis.)
Review the abstract of the Loss & Marra 2017 paper we already cite, and reflect on the fact that literally zero of their scientific conclusions are refuted by the essay above; rather, the two researchers were kevtched at for taking (in Loss & Marra 2018, an op-ed, not this 2017 science paper) a false-analogy potshot at their opponents.
Domestic cats (Felis catus) have contributed to at least 63 vertebrate extinctions, pose a major hazard to threatened vertebrates worldwide, and transmit multiple zoonotic diseases. On continents and large islands (collectively termed "mainlands"); cats are responsible for very high mortality of vertebrates. Nevertheless, cat population management is traditionally contentious and usually involves proving that cats reduce prey population sizes. We synthesize the available evidence of the negative effects of cats on mainland vertebrates. More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source-sink dynamics. Policy discussions should shift from requiring "proof of impact" to a precautionary approach that emphasizes evidence-driven management to reduce further impacts from outdoor cats.
That is from:
Importantly here, this is not even a source we are relying on for anything in our article at all but an ecology-of-fear side point. While we could cite it for a large number of other scientific claims, the fact is that all these claims are already cited to other reliable sources, which the Lynn et al. essay does not refute in any way either.
I don't normally do a citation analysis of this length and detail, but it seems warranted here given the extremity of the claim that "the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance", and the rather single-minded insistence on this by Xhkvfq (plus the fact of this overall subject area having few watchlisters; no one else is likely to examine the source closely). If there is a balance problem in this article, the Lynn et al. 2019 essay certainly does not demonstrate it.
Author comparison (via Google Scholar if not otherwise noted):
The original paper (and original op-ed) authors:
Authors of the essay above:
Authors of the rebuttal:
This took a great deal of time to dig into. Please present better sources than this. Hint: if it's an op-ed, it is not a good source, because it is a primary source full of opinion, not a secondary source presenting an overview of facts (not even a primary source presenting novel scientific research, just socio-politicized opinion-mongering). PS: I say all this as a "crazy cat gentleman". Being a cat fancier does not equate to pretense that cats (including both feral populations and indoor-outdoor pets) are not murder machines when it comes to local small wildlife. The absolutely are, and it is a real problem. Keep your cat indoors. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:34, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
llowing companion cats to roam away from home can have negative impacts on native wildlife and cat welfare. A more contained cat lifestyle can limit the detrimental impacts of roaming; however, this continues to be an uncommon choice for cat owners in many countries.so how is this evidence of "an academic debate"? It's evidence of scientific consensus. Geogene ( talk) 17:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
one of your links at random, in fact if you followed the very first link provided by Iamnotabunny, you might have found a perfectly reputable paper in BioScience by a group of researchers apparently mostly from CONICET on Systematic and persistent bias against introduced species. I don't have access to the full text of that, but the argument that the "bias ... raises questions about the validity of the claims made about [the introduced species]" appears relevant to the debate concerning the role of cats in global extinctions.
Allowing companion cats to roam away from home can have negative impacts on native wildlife and cat welfare, it is so vague that it is effectively meaningless. That something can be true does not tell us under what conditions it actually will be. VampaVampa ( talk) 01:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
While doing a quick skim of things Lynn has published, I found this commentary that Lynn [38] co-wrote. Apparently Lynn subscribes to a philosophical viewpoint that calls itself "compassionate conservation", that asserts that all individual animals have personhood and so you can't ethically harm invasive predators to protect native species, all animals of all species are of equal value. This seems to be pretty obviously a fringe viewpoint. Geogene ( talk) 17:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
This edit
[39] by
user:VampaVampa is undue emphasis on scientific papers from the 1970s that seem to contradict later work, which goes against the RS guideline at
WP:OLDSOURCES. It also contains some weird
WP:OR editorializing about Songbird Survival's website content from 20 years ago: The
advocacy group
SongBird Survival, a
limited company which achieved
charitable status in 2001 and funds research into the causes of declining
songbird populations, noted on its website in 2006 that "cats are frequently singled out as the primary reason for the disappearance of Britain's songbirds" and described the claim as unjustified. It decried the absence of numbers for cat predation on birds from the 1997 survey by the Mammal Society, and drew a comparison between the figure of 55 million birds killed annually by UK's suggested 9–10 million cats, derived from an estimate by
Cats Protection, and the 100 million birds preyed on by the 100,000-strong UK population of
sparrowhawks each year. It suggested that the hunting instinct of cats "could be dulled by their reduced need to catch their own food" and by human-sourced amusement, while noting that the total 2002 value of the UK
cat product and service market approximated £1.5bn.
[1]
sourced only to the Internet Archive and looks like it has the effect of watering down or discrediting the modern viewpoint on cat predation. It also presents an undue emphasis on RSPB's fringe scientific view that cat predation is not a significant issue and states in Wikivoice that, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country.
Geogene (
talk)
17:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
An observational study of five free-roaming farm cats carried out over 360 hours during the winter of 1978–79 in Cornwall....A WP:PRIMARY study of five cats over two weeks? In addition to being old, this is too small a sample group to take seriously.
The selection of prey species was reported as consistent with contemporary findings from New Zealand (1971–73), which concluded that birds were a minor food source for cats except in novel island habitatsis wrong, see the landmark 2013 paper in Nature [40].
The considerably lower degree of effort put in by inefficient hunters suggested that provision of "farm food reduced the need to hunt"is also wrong, some modern studies have found that feeding cats increases their hunting [41].
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country.is wrong because literature review I just mentioned said that the negative effects of cats on wildlife is global in scope. Geogene ( talk) 04:44, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
NB. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predationwhere you acknowledge that you're adding out of date information to try to shift the POV to a more pro-outdoor cat point of view, and away from the current scientific mainstream, which you apparently disagree with. Geogene ( talk) 21:53, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predationis a clear declaration of trying to advance a "cat-defense" advocacy position against current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic and dismiss them all as a conspiratorial bias-farm, and that's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE editing.
VampaVampa is grossly misunderstanding how we do things here. E.g. someone publishing 2024 articles claiming the earth is flat would not consistitute valid research, because it would not affect in any way the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is round (technically, an oblate spheroid). VampaVampa is trying to set up a situation in which source age is meaningless, and only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter. VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates" is exactly the same as creationists' attempts to pooh-pooh evolution as "just a theory"; it's a misunderstanding of what "theory" and "estimate" mean and how science actually works. A principle in science that has become broadly accepted because it closely fits the data and can be used accurately to predict results becomes a theory (versus just a hypothesis, which is what the ignorant mean when they misuse the word "theory"), and all of the conclusions that science comes to based on testing data models against particular theories are estimates. Science's actual goal is the production of practically usable estimates that survive repeated testing with sound theories and properly gathered data.
If VampaVampa wants to raise an issue with Songbird Survival as a source, they are welcome to present evidence that SS's data, conclusions, etc., are contradictory to the state of current research consensus. VampaVampa has not done that, but just issued an opinion that they don't trust SS and how SS arrived at its conclusions, and "therefore" VV is free to make use of old and advocacy-oriented source claims that no other editors accept. WP does not work that way. Editor A does not get to impose sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with, simply because Editor A doesn't like (but can't demonstrate anything wrong with) sources that B, C, etc. accept. This is not an "everyone gets to use a source they like better" system. We evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole.
Anyway, if this doesn't resolve itself pretty quickly, the thing to do is open a WP:RSN discussion about VampaVampa's cat-advocacy source and 1970s papers and how they do not align with present-day research. VV, in turn, is welcome to also present a case against SS as a source. That would probably ultimately be fruitless, because all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research; someone's just used SS because they provide a more easily digestable overview. But their own nature as an advocy group of a different sort might make them non-ideal as a source. One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually isNot unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history. Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research. Geogene ( talk) 03:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
"We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is" might be reasonable, if this is something that secondary sources have written about. Some articles do lend themselves to a "history of scholarship" sort of section, though I'm not certain this really is one. But the assumption that we can't assess a source you want to use (to override all the newer source material) until we have such a section within our own article is completely backwards.
'what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist': Well of course it didn't, in the sense of "what the present scientific assessment of this particular question is" (the process of formulating and over time adjusting such a scientific consensus certainly did exist then, and much much earlier). Papers written in the 1970s could not magically predict the future about what papers in the 2020s would say; they could only do the best job they could at the time with the data and methods then available. Their conclusions are not somehow immune to being revised, even completely overturned, by later research, especially on a question in which the observable facts are themselves changing over time. I'm not the one here with strange ideas about how science develops. It simply does not happen that half-a-century-old material, that you want to use and which contradicts current research, is more reliable than the current research. How science actually works is that old research is surprassed by newer research (absent serious problems like a "researcher" faking their data, but this is usually detected and corrected soon enough; peer review and reproduction of results happen for a reason, and there's no evidence of anything like that happening within this subject anyway).
"who exactly are you speaking for?": The entire editorial community who wrote, understand, and follow our sourcing policies and who are here to write an encyclopedia properly. I never said you were "an outsider to Wikipedia", but you will quickly enough cast yourself in the role of one if you continue to push viewpoints that are contrary to scientific consensus, in pursuit of a pro-cats advocacy viewpoint, and accusing Wikipoedia (i.e. its editorial community, or maybe you mean the specific editors you are in conflict with right now), and the entire scientific community the former relies on, as being "biased". If you feel you have "gatecrashed a private party" when confronted with WP policies and editing practices and what the modern source material is concluding, then that is an issue coming directly and entirely from you, not from me or anyone else here.
You have arrived here espousing a belief that cats are not problematic, or that they are less problematic, that particular material from the 1970s and a bit later that seems to support your viewpoint is the truth, that modern research that comes to conclusions you don't like is somehow faulty and biased, and that our own article is biased (i.e. written with an intent to deceive by pushing a particular viewpoint). But you cannot (or at least have not) demonstrated anything to support these notions at all. Bible-thumping surpassed 1970s papers and a dead pro-cat advocacy organization as if they prove you are right is circular reasoning, of the same sort as this tedious pattern: A: "The Great Flood really happened. The Bible says so clearly." B: "Modern science does not agree with you or the Bible." A: "You and the science are biased and wrong, because the Bible says it happened." You can't prove the current science is wrong without showing how it is wrong with newer and better science; retreating to earlier answers you like better but which the modern science has overridden is not scholarship, it's faith-based advocacy. Cf. also WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, WP:TRUTH, WP:GREATWRONGS, WP:ACTIVISM, WP:ADVOCACY. This is a common probelmatic issue across innumerable topics, and the community is well aware of it and well equipped to deal with it.
Article content requires citations; talk page discussions do not. No one needs to cite sources anew to raise issues with your dependence on two-generation-old materials; we have a guideline against using old science for a reason, and it applies to this subject like any other. It is no one's job here to do your good-enough-to-use-in-an-article research for you. To get you started, see the "cat predation" search results at scholar.archive.org and scholar.google.com (both constrained to year-2000-and-later material), and work from there. If you throw in the word "review" you can cause systematic and other literature reviews (scientific secondary sources that are of more value than primary research papers) to bubble somewhat up toward the top. If there are any at all that support your viewpoint, they are utterly dwarfed by those that do not. Here are a few to get you started: [43] [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], and especially [49] (which addresses the very "proof of impact" pro-cat advocacy you are promoting here). If you need full-text access to some, you might qualify for a The Wikipedia Library account which is apt to provide it.
You seem to be under an impression along the lines "If I have to show that my ancient sources are still not only reliable but so reliable that they overturn all the current scholarship, then you lot have to prove that current scholarship is itself valid." That's not how this works. The current scholarship (from reputable journals and other reliable sources) is presumptively valid, and the old material it has surpassed and contradicted is presumptively outdated and no longer reliable. WP simply could not exist if it tried to operate the basis that you'd apparently like it to, with outmoded misunderstandings being given equal or even better treatment as source material than present-day best understandings. "there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research": No, there is not a "very strong possibility" of this; it's FUD you invented out of nowhere. If researchers on this subject were ignoring prior research (either pointedly with an agenda, or randomly due to rank incompetence), they would not have passed peer review and even if they did, they would be called on it rapidly, especially in a subject in which there are up-in-arms advocacy voices (even among academics able to get papers published in the same sorts of journals) desperately trying to prove them wrong, and character-assassinating researchers who don't agree with their cat-promotional and kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism against feral predator culling (see huge thread above this one). I'm not going to expend another two days or so on detailed source analysis again, like I did last time, simply to address your demands (cf. WP:SATISFY). You have the overwhelming burden of proof here that your 50-year-old papers and defunct advocacy group are somehow more reliable sources than the current and overwhelming scientific conclusion that feral and indoor-outdoor pet cats are together ecologically very problematic (especially in combination with other invasive species like rats, foxes, dogs, weasels, etc.). There ain't no "study" of a grand total of 5 cats that can possibly dispel this. Much more statistically significant examinations dispel your "the cats aren't a real problem" idea completely (start with, e.g. [50] and at scholar.google.com, [51], and especially [52] which directly addresses the denialism you are bring here. And there's a lot more, including various modern primary research (e.g. [53]) that appears not to have been shown faulty by anyone and is inceasingly part of the analaysis, especially when it comes to sublethal population supression effects like the predator-fear factor, which combine with direct predation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading.I agree with that. For example, a reply in a side argument on their talk page:
Likewise, time of publication is not a criterion for judging scientific contributions. Did the relativity theory change Newton's account of gravitation because of its date or because of its critical input?The relevant (WP:OLDSOURCES) argument here would be that the Principia itself wouldn't be usable as a source in Wikipedia for much of anything, and that's would be particularly appropriate there because Principia is famously difficult to understand -- possibly by design. This is also not the right venue to have an argument on whether the RS Guideline that OLDSOURCES is a part of needs to be revised. I don't want to sink a lot of time into arguing the history of science or epistemology on article talkpages, my intent here is merely to point out relevant guidelines and how they apply to the disputed content, in a brief manner if possible.
Many Australian and international studies confirm that pet cats kill large numbers of wildlife (e.g. Paton 1994; Churcher & Lawton 1987; Barratt 1998; Gillies & Clout 2003; Woods et al. 2004; Lepczyk et al. 2003a, b).Grayson et al. may not agree with those papers, but here they appear to recognize it as a majority viewpoint. Fitzgerald and Turner is an OLDSOURCE from the year 2000 that, from the Google Books search you linked to, doesn't even appear to devote more than a couple of paragraphs to cat predation. Turner 2022 is a fringe opinion piece in a Frontiers Media journal that appears to question whether cats are a even an invasive species:
Quite often domestic cats are considered by conservationists to be an invasive species. The cat itself is mostly responsible for its domestication (“self- domestication,” albeit with some help from ancient peoples) and the expansion of its geographic range from the Fertile Crescent area to the East, North and South.and mocks conservation biologists
Further, people arguing against cats usually assume one of two vantage points: either that of (prey) animal protection and welfare ("the poor prey animals")when they themselves are motivated by "the poor, poor cats". Geogene ( talk) 01:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passingI fail to see how this is a problem. The point of Wikipedia is to summarize the scholarly consensus. That consensus is evolving. 50 years is more than long enough to assume, if two sources disagree, that the scholarly consensus has changed. If, as you say,
some scientists... continue to oppose the new majoritythen I'm sure there will be recent papers that say so. At the very least, I'd expect failed replications of "cats harm wildlife" papers to exist. As MVBW says above,
Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones?
cats had the greatest [negative] impacton local birds. The other papers aren't too convincing; Lilith et al. seems to be an opinion poll, Leups is in German which I can't read, Bruce seems more interested in risk to the cat than impact on fauna populations, Nielsen seems to be about cat population density and doesn't mention birds at all, and the Baker link won't load for me. So I'm sure you can see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism.
Pet cats introduced to such islands have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity.That's the one cited to the New York Times and a book from 1984. But is it something you find to be seriously in question? Note that VV just wrote above that they agree that,
[cats] are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. That's such a pedestrian claim that I'm not surprised the sourcing for it isn't the greatest. Geogene ( talk) 00:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, as its limit in scope is clear. That said, I admit I skimmed the passage. If I misunderstood, please disregard my malformed thought.
I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from?strikes me as a personal attack. I have no agenda. As I said, I really don't care about the topic of this article. My only goal here is to get all us editors pointed in the same direction so we can improve the encyclopedia together. I do not care what direction that ends up being. Your statement seems to be designed to make this academic discussion to be one about personal views and biases, and I can't see how that helps the discussion. I'd like you to strike it.
reflections of current published knowledge(bolding mine).
References
@ VampaVampa In my wikibreak, I've been thinking about this disagreement, and trying to figure out where I'm misunderstanding. I have a thought, and I'd like to run it by you to see if I'm on the right track, or barking up the wrong tree.
An objection I could see has to do with the relevancy of sources. I feel like you've been trying to point out that a source has two axes for appropriateness: recency, which I've been focused on, and applicability, which I've neglected. You made the point that a study on isolated islands does not, by default, apply to every location in the world. The UK may have factors that would lead to a different result if the study were somehow repeated there.
My feeling is that you agree that, all else being equal, recent sources should be preferred over older ones. However, a source directly studying the topic (impact of cats on birds in the UK) should be preferred over one that requires inference (study of cats on birds in isolated islands). This would mean that whether to use an old, specific source (1970s UK study) as compared to using a generalized source (current island study in the main summary, but little detail in the UK section) is an editorial judgement call, not a clear-cut case of policy.
Am I coming closer to understanding you? I feel like I've been talking past you, which means I haven't been very productive in this discussion, and I'd like to understand where you're coming from. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 12:20, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Sourcing description
|
---|
|
on continental landmasses, wildlife had co-evolved with cats for hundreds of generations and that any species that were susceptible to predation would be 'long extinct'is a fringe viewpoint. The mainstream viewpoint is that cats are an invasive species with no native range, and are subsidized by humans (keywords: subsidized predator, hyper-predation) which means that cat populations attain unnatural densities that far exceed those of natural predators that must subsist only on the prey available to them. [57], [58], [59], [60], [61], [62].
Cats predate wildlife (This statement is agnostic on the impacts on wildlife populations.)Yes. But, the topic and scope of this article is Cat predation on wildlife. Things like this 2013 paper that concluded,
Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact.[63] are within scope, it feels a little like the burden of proof is being pushed in my direction to "prove" that wildlife populations are impacted. Where is the sourcing that says that "the greatest single cause of bird mortality" or whatever the exact wording I just quoted was, is not going to impact the bird population? Clearly the authors mean it to be understood (by their policy recommendation) that this would obviously have an effect on bird populations. Geogene ( talk) 00:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
His statement ignores the fact that the status of a species can change over time. Sixteen years later, after additional habitat loss and new scientific studies, scientists now list invasive species, including cats, as the second most serious threat to declining and rare wildlife.14,15This reinforces what I've already said here about Fitzgerald being an WP:OLDSOURCE. Geogene ( talk) 21:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additive (Panel 1). Because of these complications, feral cat advocacy groups and other organizations often argue that evidence for cat impacts on mainland vertebrates is lacking (Alley Cat Allies 2017; RSPB 2017).[65] Note the context for who is debating -- scientists on the one side, and "cat advocates and other organizations", meaning the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which as the article points out has been criticized for their views on this. The paper then reviews the literature and concludes
More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics.Geogene ( talk) 22:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
This review also supports past studies in illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations.
On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additiveThis is actually a fair summary of the state of research, but it is followed by a partisan statement misrepresenting scholars who do not want to skip the aforementioned challenges and proceed to policy recommendations as policy advocates. As proposed below, one must not conflate science with policy.
cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processeswithout quantifying this potential capacity. This is again what is disputed in literature, the actuality of the problem, rather than its potentiality. Same goes for "illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations" - illustrating with examples is not the same as proving that something is always or generally the case. Because we are talking about different countries and ecosystems, this is a vital point of disagreement.
Industrial and residential development is carving the [North American] continent into islands of wildlife habitat. Birds are increasingly left with isolated patches of forest and seashore, surrounded by hostile territory. The feral cats under the San Luis Pass bridge are important only because the piping plovers have nowhere else to go.In other words, the fragmentation of bird habitats has been converting them into "islands" - which would explain the indirect relevance of island studies to some other habitats that have been destroyed by humans (not cats) in the first place. VampaVampa ( talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
In the past decade, at least a dozen studies published in top scientific journals like Biological Conservation, Journal of Zoology and Mammal Review have chronicled the problem of cat predation of small mammals and birds. The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas.Acknowledging that over the prior decade (1997-2007) science was turning against outdoor cats. I think WP:OLDSOURCES is relevant here too. Geogene ( talk) 18:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't understand the emphasis on wildlife populationsthen note that
The title (and scope) of the article is Cat predation on wildlife. Did you mean to write "...emphasis on continental wildlife populations"? I don't think the article specifically states it impacts wildlife on continents. It does state that it impacts wildlife.
As an invasive species and predator, cats do considerable ecological damage.Note the lack of any qualifier. That seems to me to claim that cats have these impacts in general, not specifically and only on islands. Am I misunderstanding?
cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areasappears to be a wholly uncontroversial statement as it is adequately qualified and evidenced through studies. Barcott is not really a scientific source, but an essay, and its original contribution consists of interviews with activists, but he makes the perceptive observation about the parallel between islands and fragmented mainland habitats. There are some scientific studies about the impact of cats on the edges of restricted wildlife conservation areas ( Kays and DeWan 2004, Seymour et al. 2020).
The ecological impact of a cat population is a difficult metric to quantify, yet probably the most important when evaluating the conservation risks associated with their management. ... Unfortunately, biologists have rarely sampled both cat and prey populations in such a way that direct effects on prey populations can be shown (e.g. house cats reduce scrub breeding birds: Crooks & Soule, 1999; cat colonies reduce grassland birds: Hawkins, 1998). Such studies must be a priority for future research, in conjunction with population estimates and hunting and ranging data from specific types of cats, if conservation biologists are to accurately advise land managers and public advocacy groups.
It would therefore seem that the domestic cat would tend to predate less vulnerable species on a continental scale, but it should be remembered that these factors do not consider the more local vulnerability of the populations that the cat could impact. In other words, the impact appears to be dependent on locality. This seems to resonate with a point that Turner 2022 (the co-author with Fitzgerald of the 2000 chapter and a prominent critic of the alarmists) has made about the various scales of measuring biodiversity and the threats to it.
Despite observational evidence that cats kill large numbers of native animals, we are still unable to infer the direct impact of cat predation on wildlife. Such studies would require detailed surveys of both prey and cat populations, and manipulating cat populations experimentally is logistically challenging, requiring cat exclusion zones(p. 2751). This is 9 years old but I think at least one can see from this that the scientific work is ongoing and the matter is probably far from settled. Modesty in claims would therefore appear sensible.
the broad mechanisms of predation they analyse still apply unless challengedIf we have sources that say this, then sure. But we are not permitted to apply parts of one source to others. That's WP:SYNTH. 3) Let's be specific about our claims. Which study are you saying should be included? Panamam (1981)? EducatedRedneck ( talk) 20:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
there are no scientific data to support that the feral cat is causing relevant losses in protected bird or in game populations in Majorcan countryside. The mesopredator release effect that he warns against has been debated in other contexts though. VampaVampa ( talk) 12:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
say that minority viewpoints represented in reliable sources must be given space in proportion to their representation in those sources(emphasis mine). Yes. That is exactly why I cannot agree to your second point. A widely held minority viewpoint should be discussed. An almost unique one should not. This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal.
I do not understand why you have an emotional reaction to [the genocide comparison].If you don't understand why someone would have an emotional reaction to genocide, I'm very alarmed.
You have even expressed the intention of changing the lede at this point.You mean, where I said
I'd like to wait a bit to let this discussion reach its conclusion? Where what I was thinking was only adding the citation to the end of a sentence as-written? I'm really struggling to view this whole paragraph as anything other than "If you're not with me, you're against me". I've already told you I don't care about the topic, just applying the scientific methodology that was drilled into me for four years in grad school. If it's a difference in "objective worldview", I don't know what to tell you other than that I'm only acting in accordance with my training as a scientist. That statement feels like it's trying to cast me as having a bias, which hasn't been identified to me.
This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal.That is fine, and you may want to assume due to WP:ONUS that for the time being Geogene is right in asserting that the critics of whatever consensus they claim to be representing are "profringe" or "fringe", but it is the purpose of our discussion to verify that assertion through examining the literature. My claim is that either (1) there is no substantial disagreement about science but only about the accompanying rhetoric (of which the most recognised example is Marra and Santella's Cat Wars) and the policy recommendations (esp. the extreme suggestion that all outdoor cats that cannot be rehomed must be killed within a short timeframe), (2) there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises), with a vocal minority of prominent critics supported by legitimate publications and a large contingent of scientists who do not engage in the debate directly but can be influenced by it or ignore it altogether by sticking to facts.
my reaction depends on what is being said and how it is being saidThis goes both ways. You may wish to consider what's more likely to accomplish your goal: saying what you feel as you feel it, or carefully tempering your responses to avoid alienating other editors.
there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises)Typically the conclusions are alleged to be the scientific facts. This discussion has become entirely too esoteric. Rather than trying to reinvent an epistemology course, perhaps we should stick with concrete proposed changes.
I was aware you said you'd "like to wait a bit" but that one sentence went against everything else you said.No, it did not. You inferred an intent, which was mistaken. This is why WP:AGF is a guideline. I expressed enthusiasm for high quality sourcing, speculated about a change to make after this discussion concluded, and mentioned a concern I have which I then settled. Nothing in there states an intent to make a change imminently.
when some authors have called for a wholesale eradication of outdoor catsI didn't see that in the discussion above. Now, I might have missed it, but it makes me wonder if you're fighting a strawman rather than engaging with the people actually before you. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 19:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I would like to point out that this edit
[69] by
user:Iamnotabunny is
WP:PROFRINGE and closed with: However, on mainlands and areas where the native species co-evolved with similar predators, studies do not show a negative population-wide impact from cats.
[1]
References
. No idea who the "National Feline Research Council" are or why we would repeat their claims in Wikivoice, but they sound like a pro-outdoor-cat partisan NGO possibly akin to the National Canine Research Council. Geogene ( talk) 15:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
"More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates."[70] Geogene ( talk) 17:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I'll take out that sentence until I have more sources, but the rest is still an improvementAs I stated in my revert edit summary, your rewrite still makes it seem as if cats are only relevant in island environments. And, since this article is controversial, and since I've already reverted you once earlier, perhaps it would be best to discuss these large changes one item at a time instead of revert warring it back in after I opened this talk page section. Geogene ( talk) 20:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
There are methods to help mitigate the environmental impact imposed by feral cats through different forms of population management. Reducing cats' impact on the environment is limited by perceptions society has towards cats because humans have a relationship with cats as pets.and also
A 2013 systematic review in Nature Communications of data from 17 studies found that feral and domestic cats are estimated to kill billions of birds in the United States every year. And added other wording to try to frame cat predation as only an issue in certain parts of the world:
Cat predation on island ecosystems such as Australia and New Zealand has severe and well-documented ecological impacts.Australia is not an island ecosystem, by the way. (Add by edit: come to think of it, New Zealand is not considered an island ecosystem, either [74].) Your version of the lead is less of a summary of an article, and more of a statement that cats only harm species on islands, which is not accurate and does not summarize the article as it currently stands.As for my edit history, if you don't like it, you are already aware of the relevant ANI thread to discuss that. I believe I mentioned that on your talk page the otherYou could read WP:BRD first. Bold, Revert, Discuss. Geogene ( talk) 22:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I think we have consensus that whatever effect cats have on populations living on large continents, the effect they have on ecologically naive island species is much greater. Given that, we need to figure out which areas are which and how to describe them. In most cases this can be described as "islands" versus "mainlands". However, while most continents and large islands have ecosystems typical of mainlands, Australia and New Zealand are ecologically naive despite their large sizes because they have not had many species exchanges with the other continents since the breakup of Gondwana. This study Doherty et al 2016 is on invasive mammalian predators in general, though does include cats, and says that "If Australia is reclassified as an island, insular endemic mammals experience more severe predator impacts than continental species."
So my questions for the rest of you:
1. Do we agree that the division we should discuss in the article is "small islands + Australia and New Zealand" versus everywhere else?
2. What's a good way to word the division that you support, regardless of whether it's that one or a different one?
Iamnotabunny ( talk) 18:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Geogene, thank you for linking Loss & Marra 2017. I was unable to find the full text of that when I came across it before. It appears to me that Loss & Marra's choice to classify Australia and New Zealand as mainlands was driven by their desire to prove that cat predation has population-level effects on mainlands. The strongest evidence they cite for that involves the silvereye in New Zealand and the long-haired rat in Australia ("the most compelling evidence to date"). This supports what I said above. Iamnotabunny ( talk) 00:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we can take some language from Doherty et al 2016: "Species most at risk from [invasive] predators have high evolutionary distinctiveness and inhabit insular environments." Iamnotabunny ( talk) 00:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
The three above threads all touch on this topic, but either lack clarity or address a different issue. All seem to agree that the mainstream view is that cats negatively impact wildlife populations. There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority view.
I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view. The view is suitable for inclusion if the following can be found:
I believe if three such high quality sources could be identified, it would demonstrate that there's enough scientific dissent that the viewpoint is not fringe. If many such sources are found, we can reevaluate the level of weight that is due. I hope this proposal will be seen favorably by all. Those who view the "uncertain impact" viewpoint as fringe may rest that such literature reviews could not be found for a fringe theory. Those who believe the "uncertain impact" viewpoint is simply a minority one can likewise be reassured that all they have to do is obtain the evidence they believe exists.
If any of the details above are unacceptable, alternative parameters are welcome. I hope this can bring us out of this uncomfortable quagmire. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 23:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. Overwhelming evidence for such impacts on islands has led to many successful cat eradications, with subsequent recovery of persisting species (Nogales et al. 2004). On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate(p. 503). I see no reason not to take their word for it.
paradigm shift, which consisted of shifting the criteria of the debate (
We ... argue that policy discussions should shift from requiring proof of impact to a precautionary approach, p. 503;
We argue that discussion about cat population management should shift toward a weight of evidence approach used hand-in-hand with the precautionary principle, p. 507).
We perceive [the argument that evidence of impact is lacking] as a major factor limiting public and political will toward initiating steps to reduce cat populations and revisiting policies like TNR, p. 503;
The management debate would be greatly reshaped by considering the weight of evidence that cats do affect mainland vertebrate populations and assuming that these impacts are likely unless evidence is provided that conclusively suggests otherwise, p. 507), so, back to my point from Russell and Blackburn 2016 about not conflating science with policy, it is not clear whether there had been any major disagreements about results of scientific study and whether any shift in scientific findings had occurred.
In addition to predation, cats... suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics.I do not believe this qualifies as a source that goes against the mainstream view. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 15:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. The initial clause relates to policy, but both subordinate clauses relate to science. The next sentences continue to discuss science by referring to "such impacts" and the evidence for them - that can only refer to science, not policy. Loss and Marra say it is the impacts on mainlands that are debated, not what to do about them. So the debate that is mentioned is scientific.
More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. This clarifies the basis on which the next claim is made (
cats ... suppress...) and that it actually refers to a potential ("are capable of") demonstrated in certain circumstances and not to a claim that the phenomena always apply. Loss and Marra are therefore being much more moderate in their scientific claims than your quotation out of context suggests. They never claim to have closed the scientific debate by scientific means, but only by proposing to lower the standard of evidence required to resolve the policy debate (no longer "requiring proof of impact" because of difficulties inherent in measuring those impacts, which they explain in Panel 1). That is my reading of the article but I am happy to be persuaded otherwise. VampaVampa ( talk) 17:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority viewis a talk page matter, extrinsic to article content and introduced by the partisan claims of Geogene and SMcCandlish above. If this can be considered out of the way, I too would happily move on to discussing the article. VampaVampa ( talk) 19:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view.I trust that the purpose of this section has been clarified for you, and you will therefore stay on topic if you participate in this section. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 19:53, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources ... Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. In other words, a literature review for these purposes needs to report and attribute arguments (views) to authors, as opposed to citing publications to support its own interpretations of evidence. (It should probably also not ignore opposition arguments at the risk of being biased.) Would that be part of your understanding?
negative effects on at least one response variableactually mean remains unknown because the response variables are not listed).
A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that viewdoes not
prescribe how review articles are conductedbut it does say what claims the reliable sourcing must contain for Wikipedia to establish academic consensus. I am unable to read this otherwise.
If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, so I am not sure why we need to reinvent Wikipedia guidelines here. Off the top of my head, there are at least three prominent adherents of the view that cats do not constitute a primary threat to global wildlife survival who are recognised for their work in biological science: Philip Baker of the University of Reading (co-author e.g. of this 2005 paper with 330 citations), Roger Tabor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and Dennis Turner of the University of Zurich (co-editor of Domestic Cat, 529 citations to the 2nd edition of 2000). I am linking to their recent expressions of views on the matter (2022 for Baker and Turner, 2013 for Tabor). This is per prominence, while the other outspoken critic of Loss, Marra et al. is Francisco Badenes Perez, with impeccable academic credentials and academic tenure at Spanish National Research Council held for 15 years. VampaVampa ( talk) 20:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Cat predation on wildlife article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Cat predation on wildlife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
{{
dead link}}
tag to
http://www.alleycat.org/document.doc?id=634When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:20, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
reading this, it seems that the cat fans are mounting a dis information campaign very similar to the climage change denialist or the tobacco does't cause cancer croud any thoughts ? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-018-1796-y — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:4701:BE80:519D:9181:46A7:996D ( talk) 13:21, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
I just deleted the pet owners section, I believe Wikipedia isn’t here to try to change minds on subjects and I think that the wording of the section was rather pointed at “convincing” people of how bad cats can be outdoors. Along with the reference to cognitive dissonance which just feels cliche, the fact that one journal piece is used, the whole thing needs to be rewritten if it wants to stay up IMO. 2601:1C0:5A00:4650:F0BC:F4F4:A6E2:92DC ( talk) 20:02, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
Please tell me why you have deleted my edit about the claim that domestic cats have exterminated 33 (bird) species. The claim is false and I posted a reference about it. Please reinstate my edit immediately.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Strippedsocks ( talk • contribs)
Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv, are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS.There was no evidence it was published in a journal later, and no evidence that the author is a recognized expert that would satisfy WP:SPS. Note that claiming that the IUCN is wrong about the number of species exterminated by cats, which seems to be the argument you're making here, is going to require excellent sourcing. Geogene ( talk) 13:02, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
@
Strippedsocks:, This edit
[2] is
original research because the sources in it don't mention cats. The subject of this article is
Cat predation on wildlife, not extinction as a general phenomenon. Additionally in your edit summary you write, They have not exterminated 33 bird species, as I prove in my preprint, which it seems must wait until it is published in a journal
. Your preprint? This implies that a
WP:SELFCITE issue is presenting itself here as well.
Geogene (
talk)
15:35, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2022 and 22 December 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Nprocaccini,
Jeanius1,
Planariaworm (
article contribs). Peer reviewers:
KMorales34,
Ablip,
Lonelychild1.
— Assignment last updated by Chelsei.L ( talk) 22:43, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
It's inevitable that there will be some coverage of feral cat management strategies, but I don't think this article should be a WP:Coatrack for that. And recent additions in that aspect are problematic because they frame management options as a dichotomy between Trap-Neuter-Return and otherwise undiscussed "trap euthanize" options. In reality, cats are managed in many different ways, through toxic baits [7], [8]; hunting with air rifles [9], automated poison spray stations [10], with genetic engineering methods (gene drives) probably coming down the pipeline [11]. Turning everything into TNR verses Trap Euthanize is WP:UNDUE. But if we're going to mention TNR, the main point is that it should a minimum reflect the apparent scientific consensus that TNR does not work. [12] Geogene ( talk) 20:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
This is not correct? It says in the article linked to this claim:
"Estimates of annual US bird mortality from predation by all cats, including both owned and un-owned cats, are in the hundreds of millions13,14 (we define un-owned cats to include farm/barn cats, strays that are fed by humans but not granted access to habitations, cats in subsidized colonies and cats that are completely feral). This magnitude would place cats among the top sources of anthropogenic bird mortality; however, window and building collisions have been suggested to cause even greater mortality15,16,17. Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation are speculative and not based on scientific data13,14,15,16 or, at best, are based on extrapolation of results from a single study18. In addition, no large-scale mortality estimates exist for mammals, which form a substantial component of cat diets." Kirschn ( talk) 08:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.[13]. Now, parsing the text you quoted with my annotations
estimates of annual bird mortality [MADE PREVIOUSLY BY OTHERS] are in the hundreds of millions...however window and building collisions have been suggested [BY OTHERS] to cause even greater mortality [CITES TO OTHERS' WORK]....Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation [BY OTHERS] are speculative and not based on scientific data....There is no contradiction here, although the Wiki article may state the claim more strongly than the source presents it. Geogene ( talk) 14:32, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
"...after humans".. surely? Holocene_extinction JeffUK 07:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned with recent efforts to suggest that the article has "too few opinions", namely in support of the notion that pet cats are not a signficant contribution to the problem, which is not at all what the sources are telling us. It's correct that Loss et al. (2013) pinned most of it in a specific place on feral populations, but that study certainly did not rule out the contribution of free-roaming (indoor-outdoor and outdoor-only) pet cats, and other sources certainly don't exclude them, either. And this article is not about feral cat predation on wildlife, but all Felis catus predation on wildlife. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Why was my contribution deleted? It was about cats striking fear into their prey. Please explain. The article without my paragraph strongly suggests that cats are unique in striking fear into prey and therefore that cats are evil. The paragraph I added puts cats in perspective, showing that they are not unique because all predators, even humans, induce fear in prey animals. You always delete my edits such that it is pointless trying to make the page better than just the c-rated and biased article it is. We will have to have a wider discussion about this article and why it is impossible to improve it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xhkvfq (talk • contribs) 18:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Please see: Draft:Cat predation on islands and Draft:Human–cat conflict. These are not viable drafts, but they contain a variety of sources that might be usable here in a WP:DUE manner. The entire gist of both drafts can probably be summed up in a single paragraph here along the lines that claims about the specific number of species extincted by cats has been subject to some debate, both because some turned out to have been pushed to the brink of extinction but not quite over that cliff, and because of definitional disputes about "species". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
In user-talk, Xhkvfq has finally come up with a source (one) in support of their position, "I still stand firmly by my statement that the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance." It is this:
This is a rebuttal piece to the following:
Xhkvfq didn't mention (perhaps didn't know about) refutation of the Lynn et 2019 work above:
Most of Lynn et al. published later a response to that as well:
While Conservation Biology appears to be a reputable journal by the journal metrics I just looked up, and it is not listed at WP:RSNP as problematic, that particular article is neither a work of primary-research science nor a secondary literature review (which would be much more valuable than the former). It is an opinion editorial, clearly labelled an essay, and it is polemical in nature. Its very title is an accusation that people who disagree with the authors are engaged in a moral panic, and the authors do nothing even in their abstract to disguise the fact that they are advancing a colleague-condemnatory opinion: "Some conservationists ... claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. ... we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic ... it is a false analogy to compare [us] with corporate and right-wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change." In short, it's a butt-hurt rant about the tone of and the analogy used by two of their ideological opponents, namely Loss & Marra 2018 (another opinion piece, not the Loss & Marra 2017 research paper we already cite in our article). The authors are correct that Loss & Marra used a bogus analogy against them, but this has absolutely nothing of any kind to do with the underlying science, and is only about collegiality in academic publishing (which the authors of this essay are of course also failing at dismally, perpetuating the mudslinging to push their "protect the kitties" agenda instead of sticking to the science).
The essay does not in detail address anything like the broad body of research in this area. It does go to some pains to criticize cats-as-a-rabies-vector and toxoplasmosis as they relate to humans, but this really has nothing to do with our subject, since ours is not an article about zoonotic cat–human disease transfer (our only disease material here is about cat–wildlife transfer). Indeed, after the "screw Loss & Marra" ranting that takes up the entire first half of the essay, the bulk of the remaining material is about human zoonosis (and fears thereof), not about cat predation on, or spread of diseases to, wildlife.
This essay is problematic in its content in other ways. E.g., "there are significant ... ethical and policy issues ... relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife": This is pure, unadulterated socio-political positioning, and has nothing to do with scientific facts at all. It's advocacy. The so-called conclusion, "Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free-ranging cats", is just empty buzzword-laden rhetoric that has no implications for our article or any of its sources. There is no demonstrable evidence of lack of "collaboration", nor any evidence that the scientific data (aside from nitpicks one might have with very particular papers) is wrong; certainly the preponderance of it is not. "Ethical knowledge" is undefinable gibberish (like "moral fact" or "upstanding data" or "conscientious observation" or "respectable information"; it is confusing two different categories of things and producing an oxymoron).
It also, in its more substantive parts, is not aiming in the direction Xhkvfq seems to believe it is: "There are good ... reasons ... to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster ... in all circumstances." This a) does nothing whatsoever to dispel evidence that free-ranging cats are disastrous in many circumstances, and b) has nothing to do with the claims in our article, or even the claims in the sources used in that article, since neither are using any "in all circumstances" language. In short, it's a straw man. More to the point, though, on p. 773: "[Our] skepticism should not be used to deny the impact cats may have when rigorously documented for specific contexts." The authors are telling us directly not to try to misuse their essay in the way Xhkvfq seems to want to misuse it. And more yet: "We welcome calls for the adoption of a precautionary approach, when it involves the implementation of mitigation measures that are not harmful, and monitoring and adaptive management". That is, the authors support extirpation if it comes to that, as long as a "harm-reduction" path is tried first, and here and several other places they urge for ethics monitoring of extirpation efforts. (The thing is, "mitigation" or harm-reduction measures already have been tried, again and again, in multiple ways, and have not worked.)
If this essay turns out to be demonstrably influential (notable authors, cited a lot, covered in the press, etc.), then there might be a WP:DUE reason to mention it as a considered opinion in the topic area, directly attributed to the authors, not stated by us as if the opinion is demonstrable fact. However, to the extent any of it is actually generalizable to the topic instead of being anger with Loss & Marra, or kumbaya "be sweet to all the creatures" stuff, this seems to be a fringe viewpoint. They're basically accusing their ideological opponents of engaging in a pseudo-scientific conspiracy (and in smear campaigning, meanwhile the authors of the essay are themselves smearing other academics, who mostly actually have much better claim to that term). As for notable authors, we have no articles on any them, except Barbara J. King, a former academic anthropologist who is now a pop-science writer – someone writing entirely outside their own field. Of the others, two are directly associated with "predator protection" stance-taking bodies; one is Carnivore Coexistence Lab [19] which has no expertise in anything but protecting native wolf populations in the US; and Centre for Compassionate Conservation [20] which is also focused on wildlife and has nothing to do with domestic species (beyond putting out a position paper against using an infertility drug on Australian feral horses – specifically opposing a bill to outlaw culling them, I might add). Neither of these organizations have anything to do with management of feral cat populations or reducing their wildlife impact. Oh, doing some more background research, there's a third: PAN Works [21], "a nonprofit think tank dedicated to the wellbeing of animals" to "cultivate compassion, respect and justice for animals, a reverence for the community of life, and a desire for people, animals and nature to thrive together. ... a global platform for ethicists, scholars and civil society working to improve animal wellbeing." So, very clearly an advocacy not research group. Oh, and there's another one: Project Coyote [22]: an advocacy group around human coexistence with coyotes (and bears and other native predators that actually belong in their environments), with a particular focus on "reforming predator management", which is a clear bias; but no connection to feral cats. Another was formerly with the the Humane Society of the US which is obviously an advocacy body, but also with US Wildlife Protection Program, so at least able to see both sides; yet also closely associated with WellBeing International [23], which "envisions people, animals and the environment thriving in a healthy and harmonious world", i.e. another advocacy organization.
"As ethicists and scientists who value the lives of individual animals as well as the preservation of biodiversity, we recognize that non-native species may, in specific circumstances, pose a threat to native wildlife" is key for two reasons: it establishes clearly that the piece is based in an "ethics" moralizing position not just science (if you think that's a stretch, the very next sentence says "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"). They continue more bluntly and emotively and personally condemnatory in this same direction: "the harming of sentient, sapient, and social individuals, such as cats, that Loss and Marra (2018) ... countenance requires strict ethical and scientific scrutiny". This is a piece of regulatory advocacy aimed directly at colleagues they disapprove of. Secondly, it also makes clear that, despite this angle, it is not actually a refutation of the premise of non-native cats' deleterious effects on native wildlife to begin with, and that matters very much here.
The more I read of the actual content in the essay, the more apparent it is that it is in large part confused, activistic nonsense. I'm shocked this actually got published in any journal at all (even an ethics one, which might have made more sense). It makes obviously nonsensical arguments, such as that because any predator can have something of a population suppressive effect on its prey species, that overwhelming evidence of cats wiping out or nearly wiping out various species in environments in which cats are invasive, and killing literally billions of birds and other small animals per year in general, somehow cannot be distinguished from native-species predation in any environment. This is, to put it bluntly, complete horseshit. And here's a double straw man: "it may be tempting to appeal to a precautionary approach that would argue that even if the impact of freeranging cats on nature and society is not settled science, we should take action to reduce or eliminate outdoor cats as a matter of precaution." Not only is there no non-fringe doubt at all about such cats' impact, no one (that we know of, covered with reliable sources in our article) has advanced any such precautionary "just kill them all now, just in case" idea; it's pure scare-tactic argument to emotion. In reality, culling of all feral cats (and rats, and foxes, and some other species) has been advocated (by anyone notable enough to quote) only in closed ecosystems like various islands. And programs to do this have been remarkably successful. One of the closing sentences in the essay (p. 774) is particularly rich: "Finally, we urge everyone concerned with free-ranging cats to reject framing this debate as a matter of us versus them." The entire point of their piece is castigating and questioning the ethics of Loss & Marra, a textbook case of "us versus them".
I do not believe this essay has any implications of any kind for this Wikipedia article. It is primarily a tit-for-tat personality dispute, mired in a "don't shoot feral cats because that's mean" emotive position, and confused cavilling about what the actual science is saying and on what basis, plus a pretense that more "collaboration" is needed when there is no independent evidence of any lack thereof (all they have to support the idea is a quote from a conference calling for a "consensus on how to manage conflicts with outdoors cats", which is a call for collaboration on regulatory solutions not a claim of lack of collaboration in the science). In short, this is not a science article of any kind, it is a socio-poltical opinion piece about what to do at the public policy level and how to arrive at that decision, and what voices should count (not Loss & Marra!) – what the authors call an "ethical dialogue that has just begun". It is not about the science question of what the facts of invasive cat predation are. The only even slight potential I can see this essay having with regard to our article is brief mention in the "Feral cat population management" section, but only along with analysis and summary of the position the authors are railing against (Loss & Marra 2018, Marra & Santella 2016, and a few others they cite by name), and post-publication rebuttal of this essay by others (Crespin et al. 2020). Remember that Loss & Marra themselves wrote "cat population management is traditionally contentious"; this essay is simply proof of it. Something from Lynn's own official bio: "specializes in animal and sustainability ethics as they interface with public policy. Exploring why and how we ought to care for people, animals and nature, this is practical research translating insights from his interdisciplinary training in ethics, geography and political theory into public dialogues over moral problems." Advocacy not science. Here's a key example from the essay that is also a fringe position: "the intrinsic value of all animals (wild and domestic) in conservation". Domestic and invasive animals have no "instrinic value" within conservation whatsoever, by definition. Conservation is about protection of a natural environment from invasive species and other anthropogenic disturbance and destruction. The authors have taken an idea from the philosophical ethics of the animal-rights platform (and vegan activism for that matter), "the intrinsic value of all animals", and glued it onto a field, conservation, that is not based on that idea at all and in fact mostly supports efforts to extirpate invasive species from environments in which they do not naturally belong! (Re-quote: "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"; the authors are angry at conservationists for not holding the authors' viewpoint that feral cats are "precious", but trying through verbal sleight-of-hand to stick this viewpoint onto them anyway as if they'll aborb it by osmosis.)
Review the abstract of the Loss & Marra 2017 paper we already cite, and reflect on the fact that literally zero of their scientific conclusions are refuted by the essay above; rather, the two researchers were kevtched at for taking (in Loss & Marra 2018, an op-ed, not this 2017 science paper) a false-analogy potshot at their opponents.
Domestic cats (Felis catus) have contributed to at least 63 vertebrate extinctions, pose a major hazard to threatened vertebrates worldwide, and transmit multiple zoonotic diseases. On continents and large islands (collectively termed "mainlands"); cats are responsible for very high mortality of vertebrates. Nevertheless, cat population management is traditionally contentious and usually involves proving that cats reduce prey population sizes. We synthesize the available evidence of the negative effects of cats on mainland vertebrates. More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source-sink dynamics. Policy discussions should shift from requiring "proof of impact" to a precautionary approach that emphasizes evidence-driven management to reduce further impacts from outdoor cats.
That is from:
Importantly here, this is not even a source we are relying on for anything in our article at all but an ecology-of-fear side point. While we could cite it for a large number of other scientific claims, the fact is that all these claims are already cited to other reliable sources, which the Lynn et al. essay does not refute in any way either.
I don't normally do a citation analysis of this length and detail, but it seems warranted here given the extremity of the claim that "the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance", and the rather single-minded insistence on this by Xhkvfq (plus the fact of this overall subject area having few watchlisters; no one else is likely to examine the source closely). If there is a balance problem in this article, the Lynn et al. 2019 essay certainly does not demonstrate it.
Author comparison (via Google Scholar if not otherwise noted):
The original paper (and original op-ed) authors:
Authors of the essay above:
Authors of the rebuttal:
This took a great deal of time to dig into. Please present better sources than this. Hint: if it's an op-ed, it is not a good source, because it is a primary source full of opinion, not a secondary source presenting an overview of facts (not even a primary source presenting novel scientific research, just socio-politicized opinion-mongering). PS: I say all this as a "crazy cat gentleman". Being a cat fancier does not equate to pretense that cats (including both feral populations and indoor-outdoor pets) are not murder machines when it comes to local small wildlife. The absolutely are, and it is a real problem. Keep your cat indoors. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:34, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
llowing companion cats to roam away from home can have negative impacts on native wildlife and cat welfare. A more contained cat lifestyle can limit the detrimental impacts of roaming; however, this continues to be an uncommon choice for cat owners in many countries.so how is this evidence of "an academic debate"? It's evidence of scientific consensus. Geogene ( talk) 17:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
one of your links at random, in fact if you followed the very first link provided by Iamnotabunny, you might have found a perfectly reputable paper in BioScience by a group of researchers apparently mostly from CONICET on Systematic and persistent bias against introduced species. I don't have access to the full text of that, but the argument that the "bias ... raises questions about the validity of the claims made about [the introduced species]" appears relevant to the debate concerning the role of cats in global extinctions.
Allowing companion cats to roam away from home can have negative impacts on native wildlife and cat welfare, it is so vague that it is effectively meaningless. That something can be true does not tell us under what conditions it actually will be. VampaVampa ( talk) 01:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
While doing a quick skim of things Lynn has published, I found this commentary that Lynn [38] co-wrote. Apparently Lynn subscribes to a philosophical viewpoint that calls itself "compassionate conservation", that asserts that all individual animals have personhood and so you can't ethically harm invasive predators to protect native species, all animals of all species are of equal value. This seems to be pretty obviously a fringe viewpoint. Geogene ( talk) 17:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
This edit
[39] by
user:VampaVampa is undue emphasis on scientific papers from the 1970s that seem to contradict later work, which goes against the RS guideline at
WP:OLDSOURCES. It also contains some weird
WP:OR editorializing about Songbird Survival's website content from 20 years ago: The
advocacy group
SongBird Survival, a
limited company which achieved
charitable status in 2001 and funds research into the causes of declining
songbird populations, noted on its website in 2006 that "cats are frequently singled out as the primary reason for the disappearance of Britain's songbirds" and described the claim as unjustified. It decried the absence of numbers for cat predation on birds from the 1997 survey by the Mammal Society, and drew a comparison between the figure of 55 million birds killed annually by UK's suggested 9–10 million cats, derived from an estimate by
Cats Protection, and the 100 million birds preyed on by the 100,000-strong UK population of
sparrowhawks each year. It suggested that the hunting instinct of cats "could be dulled by their reduced need to catch their own food" and by human-sourced amusement, while noting that the total 2002 value of the UK
cat product and service market approximated £1.5bn.
[1]
sourced only to the Internet Archive and looks like it has the effect of watering down or discrediting the modern viewpoint on cat predation. It also presents an undue emphasis on RSPB's fringe scientific view that cat predation is not a significant issue and states in Wikivoice that, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country.
Geogene (
talk)
17:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
An observational study of five free-roaming farm cats carried out over 360 hours during the winter of 1978–79 in Cornwall....A WP:PRIMARY study of five cats over two weeks? In addition to being old, this is too small a sample group to take seriously.
The selection of prey species was reported as consistent with contemporary findings from New Zealand (1971–73), which concluded that birds were a minor food source for cats except in novel island habitatsis wrong, see the landmark 2013 paper in Nature [40].
The considerably lower degree of effort put in by inefficient hunters suggested that provision of "farm food reduced the need to hunt"is also wrong, some modern studies have found that feeding cats increases their hunting [41].
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country.is wrong because literature review I just mentioned said that the negative effects of cats on wildlife is global in scope. Geogene ( talk) 04:44, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
NB. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predationwhere you acknowledge that you're adding out of date information to try to shift the POV to a more pro-outdoor cat point of view, and away from the current scientific mainstream, which you apparently disagree with. Geogene ( talk) 21:53, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predationis a clear declaration of trying to advance a "cat-defense" advocacy position against current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic and dismiss them all as a conspiratorial bias-farm, and that's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE editing.
VampaVampa is grossly misunderstanding how we do things here. E.g. someone publishing 2024 articles claiming the earth is flat would not consistitute valid research, because it would not affect in any way the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is round (technically, an oblate spheroid). VampaVampa is trying to set up a situation in which source age is meaningless, and only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter. VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates" is exactly the same as creationists' attempts to pooh-pooh evolution as "just a theory"; it's a misunderstanding of what "theory" and "estimate" mean and how science actually works. A principle in science that has become broadly accepted because it closely fits the data and can be used accurately to predict results becomes a theory (versus just a hypothesis, which is what the ignorant mean when they misuse the word "theory"), and all of the conclusions that science comes to based on testing data models against particular theories are estimates. Science's actual goal is the production of practically usable estimates that survive repeated testing with sound theories and properly gathered data.
If VampaVampa wants to raise an issue with Songbird Survival as a source, they are welcome to present evidence that SS's data, conclusions, etc., are contradictory to the state of current research consensus. VampaVampa has not done that, but just issued an opinion that they don't trust SS and how SS arrived at its conclusions, and "therefore" VV is free to make use of old and advocacy-oriented source claims that no other editors accept. WP does not work that way. Editor A does not get to impose sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with, simply because Editor A doesn't like (but can't demonstrate anything wrong with) sources that B, C, etc. accept. This is not an "everyone gets to use a source they like better" system. We evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole.
Anyway, if this doesn't resolve itself pretty quickly, the thing to do is open a WP:RSN discussion about VampaVampa's cat-advocacy source and 1970s papers and how they do not align with present-day research. VV, in turn, is welcome to also present a case against SS as a source. That would probably ultimately be fruitless, because all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research; someone's just used SS because they provide a more easily digestable overview. But their own nature as an advocy group of a different sort might make them non-ideal as a source. One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually isNot unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history. Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research. Geogene ( talk) 03:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
"We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is" might be reasonable, if this is something that secondary sources have written about. Some articles do lend themselves to a "history of scholarship" sort of section, though I'm not certain this really is one. But the assumption that we can't assess a source you want to use (to override all the newer source material) until we have such a section within our own article is completely backwards.
'what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist': Well of course it didn't, in the sense of "what the present scientific assessment of this particular question is" (the process of formulating and over time adjusting such a scientific consensus certainly did exist then, and much much earlier). Papers written in the 1970s could not magically predict the future about what papers in the 2020s would say; they could only do the best job they could at the time with the data and methods then available. Their conclusions are not somehow immune to being revised, even completely overturned, by later research, especially on a question in which the observable facts are themselves changing over time. I'm not the one here with strange ideas about how science develops. It simply does not happen that half-a-century-old material, that you want to use and which contradicts current research, is more reliable than the current research. How science actually works is that old research is surprassed by newer research (absent serious problems like a "researcher" faking their data, but this is usually detected and corrected soon enough; peer review and reproduction of results happen for a reason, and there's no evidence of anything like that happening within this subject anyway).
"who exactly are you speaking for?": The entire editorial community who wrote, understand, and follow our sourcing policies and who are here to write an encyclopedia properly. I never said you were "an outsider to Wikipedia", but you will quickly enough cast yourself in the role of one if you continue to push viewpoints that are contrary to scientific consensus, in pursuit of a pro-cats advocacy viewpoint, and accusing Wikipoedia (i.e. its editorial community, or maybe you mean the specific editors you are in conflict with right now), and the entire scientific community the former relies on, as being "biased". If you feel you have "gatecrashed a private party" when confronted with WP policies and editing practices and what the modern source material is concluding, then that is an issue coming directly and entirely from you, not from me or anyone else here.
You have arrived here espousing a belief that cats are not problematic, or that they are less problematic, that particular material from the 1970s and a bit later that seems to support your viewpoint is the truth, that modern research that comes to conclusions you don't like is somehow faulty and biased, and that our own article is biased (i.e. written with an intent to deceive by pushing a particular viewpoint). But you cannot (or at least have not) demonstrated anything to support these notions at all. Bible-thumping surpassed 1970s papers and a dead pro-cat advocacy organization as if they prove you are right is circular reasoning, of the same sort as this tedious pattern: A: "The Great Flood really happened. The Bible says so clearly." B: "Modern science does not agree with you or the Bible." A: "You and the science are biased and wrong, because the Bible says it happened." You can't prove the current science is wrong without showing how it is wrong with newer and better science; retreating to earlier answers you like better but which the modern science has overridden is not scholarship, it's faith-based advocacy. Cf. also WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, WP:TRUTH, WP:GREATWRONGS, WP:ACTIVISM, WP:ADVOCACY. This is a common probelmatic issue across innumerable topics, and the community is well aware of it and well equipped to deal with it.
Article content requires citations; talk page discussions do not. No one needs to cite sources anew to raise issues with your dependence on two-generation-old materials; we have a guideline against using old science for a reason, and it applies to this subject like any other. It is no one's job here to do your good-enough-to-use-in-an-article research for you. To get you started, see the "cat predation" search results at scholar.archive.org and scholar.google.com (both constrained to year-2000-and-later material), and work from there. If you throw in the word "review" you can cause systematic and other literature reviews (scientific secondary sources that are of more value than primary research papers) to bubble somewhat up toward the top. If there are any at all that support your viewpoint, they are utterly dwarfed by those that do not. Here are a few to get you started: [43] [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], and especially [49] (which addresses the very "proof of impact" pro-cat advocacy you are promoting here). If you need full-text access to some, you might qualify for a The Wikipedia Library account which is apt to provide it.
You seem to be under an impression along the lines "If I have to show that my ancient sources are still not only reliable but so reliable that they overturn all the current scholarship, then you lot have to prove that current scholarship is itself valid." That's not how this works. The current scholarship (from reputable journals and other reliable sources) is presumptively valid, and the old material it has surpassed and contradicted is presumptively outdated and no longer reliable. WP simply could not exist if it tried to operate the basis that you'd apparently like it to, with outmoded misunderstandings being given equal or even better treatment as source material than present-day best understandings. "there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research": No, there is not a "very strong possibility" of this; it's FUD you invented out of nowhere. If researchers on this subject were ignoring prior research (either pointedly with an agenda, or randomly due to rank incompetence), they would not have passed peer review and even if they did, they would be called on it rapidly, especially in a subject in which there are up-in-arms advocacy voices (even among academics able to get papers published in the same sorts of journals) desperately trying to prove them wrong, and character-assassinating researchers who don't agree with their cat-promotional and kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism against feral predator culling (see huge thread above this one). I'm not going to expend another two days or so on detailed source analysis again, like I did last time, simply to address your demands (cf. WP:SATISFY). You have the overwhelming burden of proof here that your 50-year-old papers and defunct advocacy group are somehow more reliable sources than the current and overwhelming scientific conclusion that feral and indoor-outdoor pet cats are together ecologically very problematic (especially in combination with other invasive species like rats, foxes, dogs, weasels, etc.). There ain't no "study" of a grand total of 5 cats that can possibly dispel this. Much more statistically significant examinations dispel your "the cats aren't a real problem" idea completely (start with, e.g. [50] and at scholar.google.com, [51], and especially [52] which directly addresses the denialism you are bring here. And there's a lot more, including various modern primary research (e.g. [53]) that appears not to have been shown faulty by anyone and is inceasingly part of the analaysis, especially when it comes to sublethal population supression effects like the predator-fear factor, which combine with direct predation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading.I agree with that. For example, a reply in a side argument on their talk page:
Likewise, time of publication is not a criterion for judging scientific contributions. Did the relativity theory change Newton's account of gravitation because of its date or because of its critical input?The relevant (WP:OLDSOURCES) argument here would be that the Principia itself wouldn't be usable as a source in Wikipedia for much of anything, and that's would be particularly appropriate there because Principia is famously difficult to understand -- possibly by design. This is also not the right venue to have an argument on whether the RS Guideline that OLDSOURCES is a part of needs to be revised. I don't want to sink a lot of time into arguing the history of science or epistemology on article talkpages, my intent here is merely to point out relevant guidelines and how they apply to the disputed content, in a brief manner if possible.
Many Australian and international studies confirm that pet cats kill large numbers of wildlife (e.g. Paton 1994; Churcher & Lawton 1987; Barratt 1998; Gillies & Clout 2003; Woods et al. 2004; Lepczyk et al. 2003a, b).Grayson et al. may not agree with those papers, but here they appear to recognize it as a majority viewpoint. Fitzgerald and Turner is an OLDSOURCE from the year 2000 that, from the Google Books search you linked to, doesn't even appear to devote more than a couple of paragraphs to cat predation. Turner 2022 is a fringe opinion piece in a Frontiers Media journal that appears to question whether cats are a even an invasive species:
Quite often domestic cats are considered by conservationists to be an invasive species. The cat itself is mostly responsible for its domestication (“self- domestication,” albeit with some help from ancient peoples) and the expansion of its geographic range from the Fertile Crescent area to the East, North and South.and mocks conservation biologists
Further, people arguing against cats usually assume one of two vantage points: either that of (prey) animal protection and welfare ("the poor prey animals")when they themselves are motivated by "the poor, poor cats". Geogene ( talk) 01:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passingI fail to see how this is a problem. The point of Wikipedia is to summarize the scholarly consensus. That consensus is evolving. 50 years is more than long enough to assume, if two sources disagree, that the scholarly consensus has changed. If, as you say,
some scientists... continue to oppose the new majoritythen I'm sure there will be recent papers that say so. At the very least, I'd expect failed replications of "cats harm wildlife" papers to exist. As MVBW says above,
Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones?
cats had the greatest [negative] impacton local birds. The other papers aren't too convincing; Lilith et al. seems to be an opinion poll, Leups is in German which I can't read, Bruce seems more interested in risk to the cat than impact on fauna populations, Nielsen seems to be about cat population density and doesn't mention birds at all, and the Baker link won't load for me. So I'm sure you can see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism.
Pet cats introduced to such islands have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity.That's the one cited to the New York Times and a book from 1984. But is it something you find to be seriously in question? Note that VV just wrote above that they agree that,
[cats] are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. That's such a pedestrian claim that I'm not surprised the sourcing for it isn't the greatest. Geogene ( talk) 00:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, as its limit in scope is clear. That said, I admit I skimmed the passage. If I misunderstood, please disregard my malformed thought.
I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from?strikes me as a personal attack. I have no agenda. As I said, I really don't care about the topic of this article. My only goal here is to get all us editors pointed in the same direction so we can improve the encyclopedia together. I do not care what direction that ends up being. Your statement seems to be designed to make this academic discussion to be one about personal views and biases, and I can't see how that helps the discussion. I'd like you to strike it.
reflections of current published knowledge(bolding mine).
References
@ VampaVampa In my wikibreak, I've been thinking about this disagreement, and trying to figure out where I'm misunderstanding. I have a thought, and I'd like to run it by you to see if I'm on the right track, or barking up the wrong tree.
An objection I could see has to do with the relevancy of sources. I feel like you've been trying to point out that a source has two axes for appropriateness: recency, which I've been focused on, and applicability, which I've neglected. You made the point that a study on isolated islands does not, by default, apply to every location in the world. The UK may have factors that would lead to a different result if the study were somehow repeated there.
My feeling is that you agree that, all else being equal, recent sources should be preferred over older ones. However, a source directly studying the topic (impact of cats on birds in the UK) should be preferred over one that requires inference (study of cats on birds in isolated islands). This would mean that whether to use an old, specific source (1970s UK study) as compared to using a generalized source (current island study in the main summary, but little detail in the UK section) is an editorial judgement call, not a clear-cut case of policy.
Am I coming closer to understanding you? I feel like I've been talking past you, which means I haven't been very productive in this discussion, and I'd like to understand where you're coming from. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 12:20, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Sourcing description
|
---|
|
on continental landmasses, wildlife had co-evolved with cats for hundreds of generations and that any species that were susceptible to predation would be 'long extinct'is a fringe viewpoint. The mainstream viewpoint is that cats are an invasive species with no native range, and are subsidized by humans (keywords: subsidized predator, hyper-predation) which means that cat populations attain unnatural densities that far exceed those of natural predators that must subsist only on the prey available to them. [57], [58], [59], [60], [61], [62].
Cats predate wildlife (This statement is agnostic on the impacts on wildlife populations.)Yes. But, the topic and scope of this article is Cat predation on wildlife. Things like this 2013 paper that concluded,
Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact.[63] are within scope, it feels a little like the burden of proof is being pushed in my direction to "prove" that wildlife populations are impacted. Where is the sourcing that says that "the greatest single cause of bird mortality" or whatever the exact wording I just quoted was, is not going to impact the bird population? Clearly the authors mean it to be understood (by their policy recommendation) that this would obviously have an effect on bird populations. Geogene ( talk) 00:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
His statement ignores the fact that the status of a species can change over time. Sixteen years later, after additional habitat loss and new scientific studies, scientists now list invasive species, including cats, as the second most serious threat to declining and rare wildlife.14,15This reinforces what I've already said here about Fitzgerald being an WP:OLDSOURCE. Geogene ( talk) 21:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additive (Panel 1). Because of these complications, feral cat advocacy groups and other organizations often argue that evidence for cat impacts on mainland vertebrates is lacking (Alley Cat Allies 2017; RSPB 2017).[65] Note the context for who is debating -- scientists on the one side, and "cat advocates and other organizations", meaning the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which as the article points out has been criticized for their views on this. The paper then reviews the literature and concludes
More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics.Geogene ( talk) 22:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
This review also supports past studies in illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations.
On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additiveThis is actually a fair summary of the state of research, but it is followed by a partisan statement misrepresenting scholars who do not want to skip the aforementioned challenges and proceed to policy recommendations as policy advocates. As proposed below, one must not conflate science with policy.
cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processeswithout quantifying this potential capacity. This is again what is disputed in literature, the actuality of the problem, rather than its potentiality. Same goes for "illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations" - illustrating with examples is not the same as proving that something is always or generally the case. Because we are talking about different countries and ecosystems, this is a vital point of disagreement.
Industrial and residential development is carving the [North American] continent into islands of wildlife habitat. Birds are increasingly left with isolated patches of forest and seashore, surrounded by hostile territory. The feral cats under the San Luis Pass bridge are important only because the piping plovers have nowhere else to go.In other words, the fragmentation of bird habitats has been converting them into "islands" - which would explain the indirect relevance of island studies to some other habitats that have been destroyed by humans (not cats) in the first place. VampaVampa ( talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
In the past decade, at least a dozen studies published in top scientific journals like Biological Conservation, Journal of Zoology and Mammal Review have chronicled the problem of cat predation of small mammals and birds. The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas.Acknowledging that over the prior decade (1997-2007) science was turning against outdoor cats. I think WP:OLDSOURCES is relevant here too. Geogene ( talk) 18:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't understand the emphasis on wildlife populationsthen note that
The title (and scope) of the article is Cat predation on wildlife. Did you mean to write "...emphasis on continental wildlife populations"? I don't think the article specifically states it impacts wildlife on continents. It does state that it impacts wildlife.
As an invasive species and predator, cats do considerable ecological damage.Note the lack of any qualifier. That seems to me to claim that cats have these impacts in general, not specifically and only on islands. Am I misunderstanding?
cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areasappears to be a wholly uncontroversial statement as it is adequately qualified and evidenced through studies. Barcott is not really a scientific source, but an essay, and its original contribution consists of interviews with activists, but he makes the perceptive observation about the parallel between islands and fragmented mainland habitats. There are some scientific studies about the impact of cats on the edges of restricted wildlife conservation areas ( Kays and DeWan 2004, Seymour et al. 2020).
The ecological impact of a cat population is a difficult metric to quantify, yet probably the most important when evaluating the conservation risks associated with their management. ... Unfortunately, biologists have rarely sampled both cat and prey populations in such a way that direct effects on prey populations can be shown (e.g. house cats reduce scrub breeding birds: Crooks & Soule, 1999; cat colonies reduce grassland birds: Hawkins, 1998). Such studies must be a priority for future research, in conjunction with population estimates and hunting and ranging data from specific types of cats, if conservation biologists are to accurately advise land managers and public advocacy groups.
It would therefore seem that the domestic cat would tend to predate less vulnerable species on a continental scale, but it should be remembered that these factors do not consider the more local vulnerability of the populations that the cat could impact. In other words, the impact appears to be dependent on locality. This seems to resonate with a point that Turner 2022 (the co-author with Fitzgerald of the 2000 chapter and a prominent critic of the alarmists) has made about the various scales of measuring biodiversity and the threats to it.
Despite observational evidence that cats kill large numbers of native animals, we are still unable to infer the direct impact of cat predation on wildlife. Such studies would require detailed surveys of both prey and cat populations, and manipulating cat populations experimentally is logistically challenging, requiring cat exclusion zones(p. 2751). This is 9 years old but I think at least one can see from this that the scientific work is ongoing and the matter is probably far from settled. Modesty in claims would therefore appear sensible.
the broad mechanisms of predation they analyse still apply unless challengedIf we have sources that say this, then sure. But we are not permitted to apply parts of one source to others. That's WP:SYNTH. 3) Let's be specific about our claims. Which study are you saying should be included? Panamam (1981)? EducatedRedneck ( talk) 20:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
there are no scientific data to support that the feral cat is causing relevant losses in protected bird or in game populations in Majorcan countryside. The mesopredator release effect that he warns against has been debated in other contexts though. VampaVampa ( talk) 12:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
say that minority viewpoints represented in reliable sources must be given space in proportion to their representation in those sources(emphasis mine). Yes. That is exactly why I cannot agree to your second point. A widely held minority viewpoint should be discussed. An almost unique one should not. This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal.
I do not understand why you have an emotional reaction to [the genocide comparison].If you don't understand why someone would have an emotional reaction to genocide, I'm very alarmed.
You have even expressed the intention of changing the lede at this point.You mean, where I said
I'd like to wait a bit to let this discussion reach its conclusion? Where what I was thinking was only adding the citation to the end of a sentence as-written? I'm really struggling to view this whole paragraph as anything other than "If you're not with me, you're against me". I've already told you I don't care about the topic, just applying the scientific methodology that was drilled into me for four years in grad school. If it's a difference in "objective worldview", I don't know what to tell you other than that I'm only acting in accordance with my training as a scientist. That statement feels like it's trying to cast me as having a bias, which hasn't been identified to me.
This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal.That is fine, and you may want to assume due to WP:ONUS that for the time being Geogene is right in asserting that the critics of whatever consensus they claim to be representing are "profringe" or "fringe", but it is the purpose of our discussion to verify that assertion through examining the literature. My claim is that either (1) there is no substantial disagreement about science but only about the accompanying rhetoric (of which the most recognised example is Marra and Santella's Cat Wars) and the policy recommendations (esp. the extreme suggestion that all outdoor cats that cannot be rehomed must be killed within a short timeframe), (2) there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises), with a vocal minority of prominent critics supported by legitimate publications and a large contingent of scientists who do not engage in the debate directly but can be influenced by it or ignore it altogether by sticking to facts.
my reaction depends on what is being said and how it is being saidThis goes both ways. You may wish to consider what's more likely to accomplish your goal: saying what you feel as you feel it, or carefully tempering your responses to avoid alienating other editors.
there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises)Typically the conclusions are alleged to be the scientific facts. This discussion has become entirely too esoteric. Rather than trying to reinvent an epistemology course, perhaps we should stick with concrete proposed changes.
I was aware you said you'd "like to wait a bit" but that one sentence went against everything else you said.No, it did not. You inferred an intent, which was mistaken. This is why WP:AGF is a guideline. I expressed enthusiasm for high quality sourcing, speculated about a change to make after this discussion concluded, and mentioned a concern I have which I then settled. Nothing in there states an intent to make a change imminently.
when some authors have called for a wholesale eradication of outdoor catsI didn't see that in the discussion above. Now, I might have missed it, but it makes me wonder if you're fighting a strawman rather than engaging with the people actually before you. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 19:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I would like to point out that this edit
[69] by
user:Iamnotabunny is
WP:PROFRINGE and closed with: However, on mainlands and areas where the native species co-evolved with similar predators, studies do not show a negative population-wide impact from cats.
[1]
References
. No idea who the "National Feline Research Council" are or why we would repeat their claims in Wikivoice, but they sound like a pro-outdoor-cat partisan NGO possibly akin to the National Canine Research Council. Geogene ( talk) 15:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
"More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates."[70] Geogene ( talk) 17:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I'll take out that sentence until I have more sources, but the rest is still an improvementAs I stated in my revert edit summary, your rewrite still makes it seem as if cats are only relevant in island environments. And, since this article is controversial, and since I've already reverted you once earlier, perhaps it would be best to discuss these large changes one item at a time instead of revert warring it back in after I opened this talk page section. Geogene ( talk) 20:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
There are methods to help mitigate the environmental impact imposed by feral cats through different forms of population management. Reducing cats' impact on the environment is limited by perceptions society has towards cats because humans have a relationship with cats as pets.and also
A 2013 systematic review in Nature Communications of data from 17 studies found that feral and domestic cats are estimated to kill billions of birds in the United States every year. And added other wording to try to frame cat predation as only an issue in certain parts of the world:
Cat predation on island ecosystems such as Australia and New Zealand has severe and well-documented ecological impacts.Australia is not an island ecosystem, by the way. (Add by edit: come to think of it, New Zealand is not considered an island ecosystem, either [74].) Your version of the lead is less of a summary of an article, and more of a statement that cats only harm species on islands, which is not accurate and does not summarize the article as it currently stands.As for my edit history, if you don't like it, you are already aware of the relevant ANI thread to discuss that. I believe I mentioned that on your talk page the otherYou could read WP:BRD first. Bold, Revert, Discuss. Geogene ( talk) 22:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I think we have consensus that whatever effect cats have on populations living on large continents, the effect they have on ecologically naive island species is much greater. Given that, we need to figure out which areas are which and how to describe them. In most cases this can be described as "islands" versus "mainlands". However, while most continents and large islands have ecosystems typical of mainlands, Australia and New Zealand are ecologically naive despite their large sizes because they have not had many species exchanges with the other continents since the breakup of Gondwana. This study Doherty et al 2016 is on invasive mammalian predators in general, though does include cats, and says that "If Australia is reclassified as an island, insular endemic mammals experience more severe predator impacts than continental species."
So my questions for the rest of you:
1. Do we agree that the division we should discuss in the article is "small islands + Australia and New Zealand" versus everywhere else?
2. What's a good way to word the division that you support, regardless of whether it's that one or a different one?
Iamnotabunny ( talk) 18:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Geogene, thank you for linking Loss & Marra 2017. I was unable to find the full text of that when I came across it before. It appears to me that Loss & Marra's choice to classify Australia and New Zealand as mainlands was driven by their desire to prove that cat predation has population-level effects on mainlands. The strongest evidence they cite for that involves the silvereye in New Zealand and the long-haired rat in Australia ("the most compelling evidence to date"). This supports what I said above. Iamnotabunny ( talk) 00:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we can take some language from Doherty et al 2016: "Species most at risk from [invasive] predators have high evolutionary distinctiveness and inhabit insular environments." Iamnotabunny ( talk) 00:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
The three above threads all touch on this topic, but either lack clarity or address a different issue. All seem to agree that the mainstream view is that cats negatively impact wildlife populations. There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority view.
I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view. The view is suitable for inclusion if the following can be found:
I believe if three such high quality sources could be identified, it would demonstrate that there's enough scientific dissent that the viewpoint is not fringe. If many such sources are found, we can reevaluate the level of weight that is due. I hope this proposal will be seen favorably by all. Those who view the "uncertain impact" viewpoint as fringe may rest that such literature reviews could not be found for a fringe theory. Those who believe the "uncertain impact" viewpoint is simply a minority one can likewise be reassured that all they have to do is obtain the evidence they believe exists.
If any of the details above are unacceptable, alternative parameters are welcome. I hope this can bring us out of this uncomfortable quagmire. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 23:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. Overwhelming evidence for such impacts on islands has led to many successful cat eradications, with subsequent recovery of persisting species (Nogales et al. 2004). On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate(p. 503). I see no reason not to take their word for it.
paradigm shift, which consisted of shifting the criteria of the debate (
We ... argue that policy discussions should shift from requiring proof of impact to a precautionary approach, p. 503;
We argue that discussion about cat population management should shift toward a weight of evidence approach used hand-in-hand with the precautionary principle, p. 507).
We perceive [the argument that evidence of impact is lacking] as a major factor limiting public and political will toward initiating steps to reduce cat populations and revisiting policies like TNR, p. 503;
The management debate would be greatly reshaped by considering the weight of evidence that cats do affect mainland vertebrate populations and assuming that these impacts are likely unless evidence is provided that conclusively suggests otherwise, p. 507), so, back to my point from Russell and Blackburn 2016 about not conflating science with policy, it is not clear whether there had been any major disagreements about results of scientific study and whether any shift in scientific findings had occurred.
In addition to predation, cats... suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics.I do not believe this qualifies as a source that goes against the mainstream view. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 15:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. The initial clause relates to policy, but both subordinate clauses relate to science. The next sentences continue to discuss science by referring to "such impacts" and the evidence for them - that can only refer to science, not policy. Loss and Marra say it is the impacts on mainlands that are debated, not what to do about them. So the debate that is mentioned is scientific.
More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. This clarifies the basis on which the next claim is made (
cats ... suppress...) and that it actually refers to a potential ("are capable of") demonstrated in certain circumstances and not to a claim that the phenomena always apply. Loss and Marra are therefore being much more moderate in their scientific claims than your quotation out of context suggests. They never claim to have closed the scientific debate by scientific means, but only by proposing to lower the standard of evidence required to resolve the policy debate (no longer "requiring proof of impact" because of difficulties inherent in measuring those impacts, which they explain in Panel 1). That is my reading of the article but I am happy to be persuaded otherwise. VampaVampa ( talk) 17:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority viewis a talk page matter, extrinsic to article content and introduced by the partisan claims of Geogene and SMcCandlish above. If this can be considered out of the way, I too would happily move on to discussing the article. VampaVampa ( talk) 19:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view.I trust that the purpose of this section has been clarified for you, and you will therefore stay on topic if you participate in this section. EducatedRedneck ( talk) 19:53, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources ... Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. In other words, a literature review for these purposes needs to report and attribute arguments (views) to authors, as opposed to citing publications to support its own interpretations of evidence. (It should probably also not ignore opposition arguments at the risk of being biased.) Would that be part of your understanding?
negative effects on at least one response variableactually mean remains unknown because the response variables are not listed).
A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that viewdoes not
prescribe how review articles are conductedbut it does say what claims the reliable sourcing must contain for Wikipedia to establish academic consensus. I am unable to read this otherwise.
If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, so I am not sure why we need to reinvent Wikipedia guidelines here. Off the top of my head, there are at least three prominent adherents of the view that cats do not constitute a primary threat to global wildlife survival who are recognised for their work in biological science: Philip Baker of the University of Reading (co-author e.g. of this 2005 paper with 330 citations), Roger Tabor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and Dennis Turner of the University of Zurich (co-editor of Domestic Cat, 529 citations to the 2nd edition of 2000). I am linking to their recent expressions of views on the matter (2022 for Baker and Turner, 2013 for Tabor). This is per prominence, while the other outspoken critic of Loss, Marra et al. is Francisco Badenes Perez, with impeccable academic credentials and academic tenure at Spanish National Research Council held for 15 years. VampaVampa ( talk) 20:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)