The irony isn't lost on me, though, that humans are even worse.

Clearly this needs to be done.

"Dogs are a man's best friend - cats are man's adorable little serial killers."

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

altered cats do not reproduce. the population declines on its own. maybe if they did a proactive tnr and discouraged people from letting their own cats out to wreak havoc and reproduce, they can find an alternative to mass murder.

they allowed this to get to this point amd now they want to kill their way out of it.

this is not the behavior of a civilized first world nation.

shame.

In the meantime, feral cats are driving unique species in Australia to extinction. A couple million of those feral cats. I doubt that TNR is capable of solving the problem before all small species are exterminated.

Cats are an invasive species in Australia. They're wiping out native species that cannot survive and have no defenses against that invasive predator.

Too bad, but there it is.

For vast rural populations of feral cats -- hundreds of thousands of cats -- it's not a scalable solution. The RSPCA itself says lethal control is the most cost-effective and humane solution in areas where the feral cats are wreaking havoc on the environment.

my guess is that farmers or others with some influence want them gone

These aren't feral colonies of 10 or 20 that live in an abandoned shack on the back 40. These are thousands and thousands of cats that are hunting species into extinction.

and for that you usually have to establish feeding stations so that you can get them.

A nice healthy female cat can easily raise 40 or 50 kittens in her lifetime. When you are dealing with 2 million animals roaming and hunting in the wild your suggestion does not make any sense.

If you had a hundred breeding females and you missed four, you are not going to cut the population. When you are dealing with wild animals, a 96% success ratio is very hard to achieve.

Successful TNR programs have another component - they effectively trap litters while still young, socialize them, and adopt them out. That's how they deal with their misses.

None of this is a practical solution for millions of feral cats in the wild.

He was harassed and eventually had to move from Galveston.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/magazine/02cats-v--birds-t.html?pagewanted=all

Kill the Cat That Kills the Bird?
"Stevenson said he tried to protect the birds by capturing the cat. He failed and returned home frustrated. Late that night, he worried the problem. “The American taxpayers spend millions of dollars to protect birds like piping plovers,” he said, “and yet here are these cats killing the birds, and nobody’s doing anything to stop it.”

The next morning, Stevenson decided to act. He loaded his .22 rifle in the van and took off for San Luis Pass. He spotted the same cat under the bridge. Stevenson put the animal in his sights and pulled the trigger.

“The cat dropped like a rock,” he said.

Up on the bridge, a tollbooth attendant named John Newland heard the shot. Newland, a quiet man in his 60s, often fed the cats under the bridge. He called them his babies. Newland bolted out of his tollbooth and saw Stevenson’s van. “I got you!” Newland screamed. “You quit shooting my cats!”"

The case went to trail for killing personal pet, but the Judge ruled that feral cats are not personal pets.

Then maintain cats are only bayoneting the survivors. However, it seems they gotta go