[MissoulaGov] cats & dogs & stewardship

[Geoff Badenoch]

Marilyn said "Let's make mindful choices always."

 

You can say that again.

 

Let's make mindful choices always

Let's make mindful choices always

Let's make mindful choices always

Let's make mindful choices always

Let's make mindful choices always

 

Regardless of your political stripe, your pet ownership status, your mode of
transportation, your place on the economic totem pole, etc., it's a
principle we can all promise to follow. 

 

Geoff Badenoch

P   Please consider the environment before printing this email. 

-----Original Message-----
From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of Marilyn Marler
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 11:16 AM
To: Jason Wiener; missoulagov at cmslists.com
Subject: [MissoulaGov] cats & dogs & stewardship

 

    Now that I've taken a full day to decompress from Bob's description of
the "dogs off leash" discussion, I can cheerfully say that, unlike Jason
(apparently) I *did* run for council at least in part because of my interest
in conservation issues and good stewardship of natural areas and wildlife.

    Cats roaming free in town *do* have negative impacts to native wildlife.
They kill a lot of birds. If only we could train them to kill starlings and
house sparrows, but we can't. They just as happily eat migratory warblers or
northern flickers (our neighbors' cat killed a flicker just recently). Birds
have enough issues with habitat loss; do we have to also accept that our
pets "need" to eat them?  Cats can hunt even with bells, even if they are
de-clawed. You might not see it, but it happens.  Denial is not a river in
Egypt, as they say.  And I'm not even getting into general bad cat behavior
like pooping in garden beds and so on, which is a legitimate quality of life
issue. We need to move towards cats as indoor pets, although I don't think
its appropriate for government to require it.  You can't have it both ways-
be an advocate of local wildlife and an advocate of outdoor unsupervised
cats. (note: I have 3 rescued cats who I love dearly).

    Dogs off leash in our conservation areas *do* have negative impacts to
native wildlife.  One person wrote to this list serve that she saw "only" 8
incidents per year of dogs harrassing wildlife.  I did some math and if one
person who spends 520 hours per year on one area of open space sees 8
incidents per year, and you expand that to cover 8 hours a day for 260 days,
and then expand that to 4 conservation areas (North Hills, Mt Sentinel, L
trail, Lincoln Hills), then someone's dog is harassing wildlife about avery
3rd day. I think that is very conservative because 1) a lot happens out of
eyesight, and 2) there are more than 8 hours per day that people are walking
dogs on conservation areas, and 3) you could probably divide those
conservation areas each again for a multiplyer of 8 instead of 4. So
conservatively, every other day.

    Bob, you included some obnoxiuos descriptions of arguements in favor of
leashed dogs. You did not include Pam's suggestion that dogs off leash
harassing wildlife might be a positive thing because we have too many urban
deer.  If we are going to do something about our urban deer population, I
really hope we can aspire to do something humane and productive, rather than
letting dogs run them to death.

    Again, I'm only focusing on conservation/stewardship issues here. Not
social issues of whether I want someone's dog tripping me while I'm out for
a run (as happens almost every time I run on the river trail which is
technically a leash area but I'm good natured so I deal with it), or
stealing my food when I'm working on Mt Sentinel. (note: I love dogs)

    And I'll close with something that is more of a topic for a book I'm
writing in my head- Can we please start moving beyond a false dichotomy of
Human Influenced vs Non Human Influenced places?  The world is human
influenced.  Let's make mindful choices always. We CAN have our pets but
respect wildlife. We CAN have landscaping that makes room for biodiversity
and wildlife.  It's old fashioned to think of humans as only having
detrimental effects on nature.  2 good books I'm reading now (for those of
you looking for winter reading):  The
<http://www.amazon.com/Sunflower-Forest-Ecological-Restoration-Communion/dp/
0520233204/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233337878&sr=8-1>  Sunflower
Forest and Bringing Nature Home.  Thanks for listening to my thoughts on
this. Marilyn

 

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Jason <mailto:JWiener at ci.missoula.mt.us>  Wiener 

To: missoulagov at cmslists.com 

Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:10 PM

Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] committee update 1-28-09

 

Amen. Though I will eventually have to do so, I sure didn't run because I
wanted to spend time regulating the presence, absence or behavior of small
animals. I guess the chicken shit should have tipped me off though, huh? 

 

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