A village in New Zealand has announced plans to ban cats, drawing\u00a0a furious response from some feline fans.<\/p>\n
The measure was unveiled by local officials of\u00a0Omaui, a small community on the country’s South Island, as a way to\u00a0protect the area’s native bird life.<\/p>\n
Under its\u00a0Pest Management Plan,\u00a0which was opened for consultation on Tuesday, residents would be required to desex, microchip and register their domestic cats with\u00a0Environment Southland.<\/p>\n
They would\u00a0then\u00a0 not be allowed to replace them when they die.\u00a0<\/p>\n
"There’s cats getting into the native bush; they’re preying on native birds, they’re taking insects, they’re taking reptiles – all sorts of things,"\u00a0biosecurity operations manager Ali Meade said, according to Newshub.\u00a0"They’re doing quite a bit of damage."<\/p>\n
John Collins,\u00a0Omaui Landcare Trust leader, said they were not "cat haters".\u00a0<\/p>\n
"But we’d like to see responsible pet ownership," Mr Collins was quoted as saying. "And this really isn’t the place for cats."<\/p>\n
However, some residents expressed outrage at the proposals.<\/p>\n
"You’re just told one day that your cats, your treasured little possessions… really, that’s it,"\u00a0 Terry Dean was quoted as saying.\u00a0"Either they get trapped in the traps, or those that survive can’t be replaced."<\/p>\n
Nico Jarvis said the news had come as\u00a0"an absolute shock to me".<\/p>\n
She said\u00a0owning three cats was the only way to tackle the area’s ”intense” rodent problem.<\/p>\n
Are cats better pets than dogs?<\/aside>\n
”It doesn’t matter how many [rodents] I trap and poison, more just keep coming in from the bush," she told the Otago Daily Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
”They chew into your house, you can’t get rid of them. ‘If I cannot have a cat, it almost becomes unhealthy for me to live in my house,” she said.<\/p>\n
Cats,\u00a0ranked among the 100 worst non-native invasive species in the world, have long been seen as a danger to eco systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Peter Marra, the head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Centre, said cats "make wonderful pets".<\/p>\n
"But they shouldn’t be allowed to roam outside – it’s a really obvious solution," he told the BBC.<\/p>\n
"We would never let dogs do that. It’s about time we treat cats like dogs."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A village in New Zealand has announced plans to ban cats, drawing\u00a0a furious response from some feline fans. The measure was unveiled by local officials of\u00a0Omaui, a small community on the country’s South Island, as a way to\u00a0protect the area’s native bird life. Under its\u00a0Pest Management Plan,\u00a0which was opened for consultation on Tuesday, residents would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}