Animal rights activists yesterday urged the public to adopt cats instead of buying them and called on the government to neuter feral felines, instead of capturing and killing them.
Su Sheng-chieh (蘇聖傑), the site manager of Meet Pets, a Web site aimed at promoting animal adoption and other animal-rights related issues, said that the government's method of capturing stray animals had not been effective in cutting back on the number of strays.
Su made the remarks at the launch of a book on cats.
The Web site has recently been promoting the Feral Cats Trap-Neuter-Release or Return (TNR) program, a method used overseas to control stray cat populations.
According to the program, stray cats are trapped and then neutered at veterinary clinics, Su said.
The cats are then marked and released where they were found, Su said.
By only capturing and destroying cats, the government is not dealing with the root cause of the problem, because cats that elude catchers continue to breed, Su added.
According to figures provided at the event, more than 14,500 stray cats currently roam the streets of Taipei City. The number exceeds the estimated 14,000 stray dogs on the city's streets.
Su said the site conducted TNR experiments, starting in small boroughs in the city where kittens were often found.
Instead of trapping kittens, which was a tough task because they are small and hard to spot, they trapped and neutered adult cats, he said.
After a while, kittens were seen less often in the area, meaning that the cats had stopped reproducing, he added.
As to whether the cats that were released would cause further problems, Su said it would not be an issue.
"Ecologically speaking, there's a balance in nature. If no stray cats were around then people would have more mice and cockroach problems," Su said.
"Stray cats should be allowed to exist," he added.
Su said he hoped the government would consider TNR as a policy because capturing stray cats, putting them into shelters and then euthanizing them did not address the underlying issue.
He added that in big cities in Taiwan adopting cats was becoming more popular than adopting dogs, as dogs require more time and energy to train, while cats do not make as much noise and do not attack people.
Internationally, however, the TNR program is still controversial.
A number of wildlife and bird advocacy organizations reportedly argued that TNR allows feral cats to prey on wildlife, which may threaten endangered species.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Police today said they are stepping up patrols throughout the Taipei MRT system, after a social media user threatened to detonate a bomb at an unspecified station this afternoon. Although they strongly believe the threat to be unsubstantiated, Taipei Metro police and the Railway Police Bureau still said that security and patrols would be heightened through the system. Many copycat messages have been posted since Friday’s stabbing attacks at Taipei Main Station and near Zhongshan MRT Station that left three dead and 11 injured, police said. Last night, a Threads user in a post said they would detonate a bomb on the Taipei
RSS