I'm concerned about the ecological ramifications of people allowing their pets to hunt. I can't say I've looked into the matter too much, but if enough people do it, it could do some damage to local ecosystems. I know they are having really big problems in Australia because of it.
Personally, I have always believed that, like so many other supposed ecological "threats" we are told to panic over, but are, in fact, grossly over-stated, or are even outright scientific fraud *cough* Global "Warming" *cough*... In most areas of the world, the ecological "threat" that domestic cats actually pose is minimal at best.
And while you all are sharpening your knives, I will give you several logical reasons why.
The biggest and best example is that in most areas of the world, such as the Afrasian* Continent, as well as the American Continent, domestic cats have simply taken the place of the natural small cat predator that has already been displaced by human habitation. So in the northern half of the American continent, domestic cats have taken the place of bobcats, ocelots, and jaguarundis.
In the African lobe of Afrasia, domestic cats are natural species. In the European sub-continent, there *is* a problem in Great Britain, where the natural feline predator is actually a subspecies that domestics can and do interbreed with.
Other than that, the only places where domestic cats *are* a potential danger to the local fauna is on islands, which developed unique, isolated habitats without natural predators, such as New Zealand, and Caribbean islands, which have all sorts of ground-nesting and/or flightless birds.
In many places, domestic cats are actually a BENEFIT, such as right here in southern ontario. Human settlement has mostly driven out the natural predator (bobcat), which suddenly left many species without anything to control their natural populations. It's no different than the way we killed off all the cougars and wolves, and suddenly the deer and moose populations explode, and need to be artificially culled.
*I subscribe to the four continent model, rather than the seven. Europe is not a continent, and has never been. It's just a lobe of Asia. Likewise, Africa does not have total separation from the Asian continent either. So, the four continent model treats both halves of America as a single continent, and Afrasia as a single continent as well, and Africa, Europe, India are considered as 'lobes' or 'sub-continents'.
