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.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported