Leash rules for pets installed to protect rare bird

San Francisco Dogs and Rare Birds

Dogs will no longer be allowed off-leash during much of the year on parts of San Francisco's Crissy Field and Ocean Beach, under a new emergency rule aimed at protecting a rare shorebird.

Officials with the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area have posted signs about the new rule and began warning dog owners over the weekend about the minimum $100 citation for having off-leash pets in zones designated to protect the Western snowy plover. The bird is considered threatened and protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Pets and wildlife don't mix. We forget that cats and dogs are predators and that our small wildlife -- even in urban areas -- aren't genetically wired to recognize dogs, cats, ferrets, etc. as predators, or have built in strategies to protect themselves.

Another factor that we don't think of is that pets on leashes are frequently encountered by wildlife -- and they get used to seeing these predators as benign. Then they encounter unleashed predators and they are caught off-guard.

Urban wildlife, in particular, are being decimated by pets that run loose. Cats hunt at night when they are let out and owners think only about the cats' needs for freedom and happiness.
Cats hunt small native rodents such as native field mice and squirrels.

Dogs hunt birds -- I recently saw a German Shepherd maul and kill a full grown duck at an urban wetlands when the dog's master let him run loose. Remorse doesn't solve the problem. Only prevention will.

The sheer numbers of pets are also a problem.

Did you know?

* There are more than 60 million pet dogs in the U.S. and nearly 70 million pet cats.

SOURCE: http://www.avma.org/membshp/marketstats/sourcebook.asp


Feral cats are the offspring of stray or abandoned household pets. Raised without human contact, they quickly revert to a wild state and form colonies wherever food and shelter are available.

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Many city and county animal control agencies are mandated only to deal with dogs—not cats. So for decades feral cats have remained untouchable.

Some feline experts now estimate 70 million feral cats live in the United States, the consequence of little effort to control the population and of the cat's ability to reproduce quickly.

The number concerns wildlife and ornithology organizations that believe these stealthy predators decimate bird populations and threaten public health. The organizations want the cats removed from the environment and taken to animal shelters, where they are often killed.

In urban areas there are hundreds of cats per square mile (1.6 square kilometers) more cats than nature can support.



SOURCE: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0907_040907_feralcats.html