Feline colonies are located in urban or rural areas and receive systematic care from volunteers and associations, a situation which, beyond the love for cats, has given rise to the demand for ban this species in two Spanish archipelagos.
These cats are usually part of a careful program that includes feeding, neutering, and general monitoring for ensure your well-being and that of the community.
The objective of the controlled colonies is to provide a safe and healthy environment for these cats, prevent the spread of disease and problems in the communities where they live. There are, however, points where their control is virtually nil.
Ban cat colonies
However, Not all cat colonies are welcomeaccording to the claim that the environmental entities of the Balearic and Canary Islands have been activated in unison.
Environmentalists in these archipelagos have called for the Ban feline colonies in protected areas island ecosystems if we consider that cats feed on the community’s wildlife.
Specifically, the Association for the Conservation of Canarian Biodiversity (ACBC), the Balearic Group of Ornithology and Defense of Nature (GOB) and the Natural History Society of the Balearic Islands (SHNB), scientific and conservation entities of the two large archipelagos, they intend “an approach that takes into account the singularity of island systems in the design of the management of feline colonies, to avoid particularly serious impacts on island fauna.
Wildlife vulnerability
They expressed themselves in response to the proposal of the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, through the General Directorate of Animal Rights, which developed a technical guideline for the management of feline colonies guide the town halls (competent administration in this matter) in the implementation of the provisions of Law 7/2023 on the protection of the rights and welfare of animals.
The conservation entities considered that the official initiative “should take into account the vulnerability of island fauna and the impact generated by cats.” In this sense, they stressed that the current text “ignores this key characteristic for the conservation of the biodiversity of the archipelagos.”
No control
Furthermore, they pointed out that current guidelines focus on the management of cat colonies, present in most cities, and that to date they have been manipulated “by people or animal entities with virtually non-existent administrative control measures.”
Criticism from these groups has focused on the fact that cats “They pose one of the greatest threats to native wildlife worldwide.with a greater effect than that of rodents or other introduced predators.
They also recalled that the World Conservation Union (IUCN) ranks the cat among the 100 most harmful invasive species in the world.
Species predators
For example, they showed that cats feed on more than 2,000 wild species, 90% of which are vertebrates. “While in continental ecosystems, 8.6% of the species consumed present conservation problems, in island ecosystems this figure rises to more than 25%.”
“This difference in impacts can be explained by the fact that in continental ecosystems, the cat may be a native species which, along with other mammalian predators, have co-evolved in their prey populations throughout hundreds of thousands of years or more“They are therefore adapted to the predation pressure exerted by cats,” the ecologists specify. On the other hand, in the archipelagos, particularly in the Canaries and the Balearics, the cat “It is a species introduced by man“.
Threat to feline colonies
The impact of cats on the species has also been the subject of attention by the Artemisan Foundation, which in February of this year promoted a study published in the international scientific journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science in which it was shown that cats Domestic cats pose a real threat to wildlife in Spain.
According to the foundation, “numerous studies from different countries demonstrate the problems of domestic cats in the natural environment, to which is now added the publication, for the first time in an international scientific journal, of a study carried out in the Natura 2000 Red areas of Spain“.
This situation “endangers biodiversity, particularly in areas with protected or threatened speciesin the recovery of which large amounts of economic and human resources are being invested,” according to the publication.
