You’ve probably heard about the problem with cats. Your precious kitty might actually be a lethal predator, slaughtering wild birds and mice every chance she gets.
This is no joke. In 2013, a study found that cats are one of the major threats to U.S. wildlife, killing up to 3.7 billion birds and 20.7 billion mammals each year.
But pet predation is just one of several ways our furry friends may be harming our environment. And you’ve probably never even thought about some of the others.
Another 2013 study found that the food we give our pets is much less sustainable than it needs to be. For instance, according to the authors, many pet owners buy food with “human-grade ingredients,” including high levels of animal protein.
The study suggests that pet food could be made with more plant protein and “secondary products from the human food chain,” which would shrink its environmental footprint.
And pet waste, too, can pose a major environmental problem.
Author Darcy Matheson found that 97,000 tonnes of dog waste is left in Vancouver parks each year, which poses health risks when the waste gets into open water, according to a recent article in the Georgia Straight.
We tend to think about animal welfare and conservation in very different terms. For instance, it’s more upsetting for most people to think about a pet cat killing a bird than about the environmental impact of dog food or waste.
But Dr. David Fraser, of UBC’s Animal Welfare Program, says we need to bridge that gap. He argues that the same actions that hurt and kill individual animals—letting cats roam the streets, for instance—can also have major conservation impacts, including the disruption of ecological systems and even extinction of some species.
“My argument . . . is that with a busy population of seven billion people and counting, we have such a pervasive effect on all the other inhabitants of our own small planet that our responsibilities have broadened greatly,” he said during a talk in October 2015. “And that we need today a new ethic that will combine what we now call animal welfare and what we now call conservation into a coherent approach.”
He said if enough people share that perspective, it could lead to changes in social policy, including design standards for buildings to prevent bird strikes and speed limits in wildlife habitat.
But such changes will require that we look beyond the little things—the individual birds that our cats bring home—and start to look at the broader ecological implications of our actions.
By Maura Forrest, 21 April 2016