09/30/2026
A recent study in Australia exonerated cats for the wildlife harm they were being falsely blamed for. Researchers analyzed 11 years (2013–2024) of wildlife rehabilitation records in Australia, covering 52,475 individual animals from 158 threatened species.
Human and human activities were responsible for most known wildlife harm, followed by extreme weather events (which might also be human-related). Notably, other animals represented just 4.4% of all wildlife injuries, with cats representing a minority of those (0.6%). That is 315 of the 52,475 injuries, and does not account for the fact that cats are scavengers and may have come across wild animals already injured for other reasons (e.g., human caused harm).
The study concluded that while public debate across the US has disproportionately emphasized free roaming cats as a “conservation threat,” that debate is incorrect.
In addition to falsely blaming cats, it overlooks more common and potentially preventable human causes of wildlife injury. The analysis finds that most harm is associated with human-modified environments, including hazardous infrastructure, roads, entangling materials, poisons in the environment and habitat fragmentation because of development.
Another new study reported similar results. It examined hunting behavior among 2,400 semi-owned/free roaming cats. The researchers were interested in testing whether widely cited estimates of free roaming cats killing “61–118 million birds annually” were accurate. They were not!
Researchers found that roughly 8 out of 10 cats — 77% — didn’t hunt, while only 23% hunted sometimes or often, and focused mostly on insects. Birds were the least commonly reported prey, resulting in a figure over 300 times lower than reported by cat-killing advocates. Once again, being scavengers, cats could have come across many of the birds, who were already injured/killed for other reasons, such as crashing into windows.
Despite the growing scientific consensus that cats are not to blame for species decline and that calls to eliminate them “by any means necessary” is “wrong and fuels an unwarranted moral panic over cats,” it is not likely to change policies toward them by government agencies and organizations pursing a “native-species” agenda.
When nativists and bird watchers call for killing cats, they are not motivated by saving birds or wildlife. Instead, they are motivated by a hatred of cats.
Published in part by Nathan Winograd on Substack.
