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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
RSS