Question: Some people think that domestic cats are ruining natural ecosystems do you think that they are right?

Kevin Mahon answered on 14 Jun 2012:

Good question! The most notable examples of this are in Australia where the pet cat has been blamed for many of the countries biodiversity problems. Our recent songbird population collapse in the UK was also blamed on cats by some people.

Personally, I am yet to see conclusive evidence that cats have a significant enough impact of population numbers of any species to cause them to ‘ruin’ an ecosystem. yes they are an un-natural predator, but they have been a part of our society for nearly 3000 years – cats are not a new species by any stretch of the imagination.

Much of the work showing cats impact on natural species is by the admission of the researchers, difficult to draw solid conclusions from because we don’t have an effective way of measuring it. Much of the work touted by those who claim cats are having an impact relies on counting numbers of species cats bring back to their owners and then making estiamtes for populations on that – not exactly a robust way of drawing conclusions!

I think cats are an easy target for governments in countires like Australia to pin blame on. There is much stronger evidence that human’s track records of introducing non-native wild species, like the european green crab ruins ecosystems than cats hunting now and then!