Kerre Woodham: We need to be able to treat feral animals as pests

Cats and dogs who are part of our families are much loved and live the life of Riley. There must be some days when your cat or dog is lying curled up in the sun with a full tummy, waiting for 3 o'clock when the kids come home and surround it with love, or waiting for you to take it for a walk, or waiting for you to sit down so it can curl up in your lap and they must think to themselves, by crikey, I struck the jackpot. I am one lucky little fur baby. 

But cats and dogs that have been abandoned and live miserable lives eking out an existence in the bush and on the edges of the city are dangerous pests and they're in the sights of DOC. The New Zealand Veterinary Association and its Companion Animal Veterinarian Branch are the latest organisations to come out in support of feral cats' inclusion in the Predator Free 2050 Strategy. And there have been calls for wild dogs to be officially labelled pests too, so there can be more freedom to eradicate them. With the dogs, it comes after so many attacks in the Far North, the latest, an international ultra runner and his support crew were attacked by dogs on the Te Araroa Trail in January of this year and I believe there's still a wild dog warning along the Te Paki Coastal Track near Cape Reinga. 

There are limited options to tackle an animal problem if it is not labelled a pest. The dogs, for instance, you can only do what DOC is doing, and that's the authorised hunts but farmers are allowed to kill dogs on their own property if they're threatening them or their animals. And there have been numerous instances of herds and flocks being savaged by these feral dogs who are starving and desperate and also don't mind a little light sport of murdering and ravaging. So farmers are able to attack those dogs. You can also humanely trap them legally. 

But once you put an animal into the Predator Free 2050 charter, it will align national efforts, improve clarity, and support reasonable feral animal management practices, such as desexing, microchipping and containment. The vets say feral cats, while sentient, pose a serious threat to native wildlife and are implicated in the spread of diseases such as toxoplasmosis. So cats are in, but at this stage, dogs are still out. The vets say it's critical that humane destruction methods are employed for all pests included in the strategy, and I'd support that. You don't want any animal to suffer needlessly, but a country that prides itself on its native flora and fauna, sells itself to visitors on its flora and fauna, needs to be able to control the pests that threaten that. 

It's the human pests who neglect their pets, who dump unwanted litters of kittens and pups who are at fault here. A Far North dog advocate says as the economy worsens and people get poorer, the situation is getting worse because people don't have the money to fence their properties, they don't have the money to feed their dogs properly, they're exhausted, so they don't walk the dogs wander. 

The current laws, advocates for change say, do not serve communities well and lead to inconsistencies in the way councils around the country approach the roaming dog problem. The advocate says mandatory desexing, except for dogs belonging to registered breeders, would help but the absolute key to changing behaviour is community education about how to care for dogs and be safe around them. 

The Far North Mayor Moko Tepania supports a push by Auckland Council for greater powers to be able to desex roaming dogs when they're picked up. So your dog might have been a fully kitted out male when you let it go wandering off your property, but it'll come back to you neutered. Same with the females. And I don't have a problem with that either. 

Trapping, desexing and freeing feral cats was the strategy of choice of the wealthy cat ladies who were my neighbours when I was living next to a big park in Freeman's Bay in Auckland. These beautifully dressed women would take it in turns, there was a roster, to go around Western Park, trapping the cats, taking them to the vets, paying for them to be desexed, and then they'd set them free again. 'Oh yes, they'll kill a few birds and, but, you know, ultimately it will be a problem solved in the future'. They couldn't bear to see the cats put down, even humanely, but they could live with desexing them knowing that there wouldn't be future cats who would be living on the edges of the city. I just don't think it's a viable option, given how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. Nobody knows how many. The range from 2.5 million to 14 million is so wide, it makes it meaningless, but we do need to be able to treat feral animals as pests. 

Cats and dogs who belong to a family get all the protection in the world. You desex them, you microchip them, you love them. Cats and dogs that are neglected, unloved, and have turned feral, they should be fair game. 

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