Letters, January 18, 2023

Pandemic blame

I FEEL obliged to respond to Robert Armstrong’s letter (December 21), in which he refers to me as a Tiger – thanks Robert, my wife is in agreement with you on that point.

However, I do think that the generalisation you made of my support of Scott Morrison needs correcting.

I only supported his Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic and decried the Labor government’s relentless hounding of Morrison following the Federal Election.

An interesting fact you may find hard to swallow is that during the whole of the pandemic under the Morrison Government we sadly lost 8077 (May 21, 2022) lives to the virus.

Since Labor came to power, in a few short months, that number has more than doubled to 16,673 (December 16, 2022).

I await with bated breath to see how you manage to blame Scott Morrison for this poor performance by the Albanese Government.

Political views to one side, a healthy new year to all.

Clive Bulmer, Forreston

Cat vilification

IN reply to the letters about dairy farming and cats (The Courier, December 21), the elephant in the room is human activity, especially dairy farms, that are the principal cause of loss of native wildlife.

Cats are used as a scapegoat for our damage to wildlife through destruction of habitat and the excessive and indiscriminate use of pesticides and poisons.

There is no evidence in any study yet produced in Australia that cats have caused the extinction of any mainland species of native animal or that they are more than a marginal threat to the survival of any mainland native species.

All we do know is that several studies indicate that cats have caused local extinctions in some fragile and isolated island environments – usually where they were deliberately introduced for the purpose of killing native animals or rabbits. The whole basis of the obsession with vilifying cats is based on a politician’s opinion of how many feral cats are in Australia, not science.

Former Environment Minister Greg Hunt falsely claimed on ABC’s Landline in 2014 that the Action Plan for Australian Mammals (2014) said there were up to 20 million feral cats taking up to four native Australian animals a night, over 20 billion a year.

However, when Fact Check contacted the authors of the plan, they said the plan provided no such statistic.

Similarly, other figures often quoted to vilify cats refer to a study of the stomach contents of cats in the Kimberley.  This figure is wrongly applied to the whole of Australia.  Studies in other areas have found rabbits to be the main diet of “feral” cats.

Janet Allan, Mallala

Flood preparation

AS we watch the slow and constant progress of the flows of the Murray and Darling Rivers to levels not witnessed since 1956, how will the Lower Lakes, Meningie, Milang, Clayton, Hindmarsh Island and Coorong cope?

Above Goolwa North, the Currency Creek opening to the Murray River creates a wedge-like peninsula of developed flat land with the water in the existing wetlands most likely to rise.

Let’s not panic but, as a neighbor suggests, we should start moving valuables off floor levels and watch out for any sewage problems.

Glen Chenoweth, Goolwa North

Woke

CRICKET commentators in the media are preferring to use the term ‘batters’, for male and female cricketers.

Can’t they be batsmen and batswomen rather than instruments of woke derangement?

Christopher Collins, Mt Barker

Desexing benefits

I AM responding to the letter ‘Missing the point’, by Ian Westley as well as the letter ‘Scientific approach’ by Alice Shore (The Courier, December 21).

Alice Shore of Birdwood correctly notes that Christine Pierson of C.A.T.S. Cats Assistance to Sterilise successfully uses a scientific method to reduce cat numbers and cat related problems.

This is the ‘desex, return to home’ (DRH) method where residents return desexed cats to their territory, to prevent new and undesexed cats from infiltrating.

This humane, efficient and cost effective method ensures that cat numbers are reduced to their minimum number required to hold territories, and also control mice, rats and snakes.

Ian Westley’s belief that cats could be eradicated, however, is not a reality, as it does not allow for the phenomenon of nature’s vacuum effect, which ensures that there will never be a cat free zone in an open system – like mainland Australia – that sustains life.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so confinement such as a cat run, ensures that another lot of cats will take their place in the open vacated space. This same principle applies to all species.

There is unfortunately no perfect solution, so aiming for a goal that is never going to be accomplished is pure fantasy.

The best that can be achieved, is to humanely reduce the ceiling numbers and this was already happening through C.A.T.S. mass desexing program – 135,000 cats to date – until the new state-wide cat laws began and the desexing numbers fell to half the weekly rate.

The RSPCA has just stated that in the last five years (since cat legislation was introduced) street cat numbers have doubled. This stands in stark contrast to the time when C.A.T.S. first began its mass desexing program of all cats, (owned and unowned).

At this time cats taken to the main Adelaide shelter dropped to virtually half within the first six years and C.A.T.S. can substantiate this.

Killing animals as a control measure has never been successful and has frequently resulted in an increased not decreased amount.

Mr Westley’s belief that confined cats will save wildlife is also trading on a false premise again – new cats pour through the vacuum that has been created.

Cat confinement is also against natural behavior and has proved to cause obesity, heart problems, arthritis and serious anxiety disorders.

Cruelty in attempts to assist nature is always unacceptable but cruelty based on a false concept or on pure imagination without proven science is deplorable.

Lisa Daintree, Strathalbyn