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.
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
HOLIDAY EXERCISE: National forest recreation areas from north to south offer travelers a wide choice of sights to connect with nature and enjoy its benefits Hiking is a good way to improve one’s health, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency said, as it released a list of national forest recreation areas that travelers can visit during the Lunar New Year holiday. Taking a green shower of phytoncides in the woods could boost one’s immunity system and metabolism, agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) cited a Japanese study as saying. For people visiting northern Taiwan, Lin recommended the Dongyanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Taoyuan’s Fusing District (復興). Once an important plantation in the north, Dongyanshan (東眼山) has a number of historic monuments, he said. The area is broadly covered by
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
RSS