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Comment by cyrnel | Hacker News Reader

> you’d have to cull them to prevent them overpopulating and destroying their environment.

We don't do this for cats, why should we have to do it for kangaroos? Trap Neuter Release exists. There have been struggles with implementing it, but it seems largely to do with lack of awareness and funding.

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We do cull cats. With numbers in the millions killing billions of native animals per year and already contributing to many extinctions, nothing is going to work except for science fiction bioweapons. Discussion and research is more around how to efficiently kill as many feral cats as possible without killing native animals or pets.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-08/federal-inquiry-propo...

In Australia we cull feral cats. We don't trap, neuter, release:

https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents...

We're not likely to release a neutered cat back into the environment where it will kill more native creatures. Feral cats have already caused the extinction of 20 native species.

AFAICT, no one around here culls or traps cats, but we don't have a cat overpopulation problem. OTOH, even with hunting seasons, we definitely have a deer population problem, and the rabbits have been going insane this year for some reason.

Perhaps it's just a case of different strategies for different regions.

New Zealand apparently does. Never been there, seems lovely

(edit: this opening graf is too good not to share)

"Animal welfare protestors at a hunting contest in rural New Zealand have faced off against a group of child attendees, some clutching dead feral cats, who repeatedly chanted the word “meat” at demonstrators."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/chaos-at-new-z...

Cats are predators, that’s very different from say deer or kangaroo populations, which tend to overboom and then starve after they strip the environment of the plants they eat.

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