AGFC to Begin Feral Cat Trapping Effort at Barnett Access
First posted on 06-28-2012
The Barnett Access on the Little Red River is being overrun with feral cats. Due to the interaction between the public and feral cats, and the risk to human health, the AGFC is going to begin a trapping effort in July to remove the cats.
Tom Bly, fisheries biologist with the AGFC said that feral cats are considered an invasive species by conservation agencies and organizations nationwide. “Cats are the most significant invasive species affecting native bird populations and are also estimated to kill twice as many mammals as birds. There are also numerous human health concerns associated with feral cat colonies. Through feces, fleas, bites, or scratches cats can pass a variety of parasitic, bacterial and viral illnesses including rabies, toxoplasmosis, hook worms, and typhus,” Bly said.
This is disconcerting considering the number of visitors that use this area annually, Bly said. “The AGFC as well as the Humane Society of Heber Springs are starting to hear complaints and concerns from the general public,” he added.
The AGFC will be working closely with the Heber Springs Humane Society to remove the cats as humanely as possible. Signs will be posted to prohibit feeding the cats to aide in the project. Non-lethal “live traps” baited with sardines will be used to capture the cats. The traps will be set in the evening and picked up each morning. All feral cats captured will be transported to the Humane Society. Once the cats are removed, undergrowth will be cleared to deter recolonization and the AGFC will continue to monitor the area to prevent any further colonization.
Barnett Access is the most heavily used AGFC access on the river with hundreds of trout anglers using the access annually. The popular fishery was created when the Greers Ferry Dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and hydroelectric power generation. Commercial power generation began in July 1964. The resulting trout waters of the Greers Ferry tailwater flow about 30 miles through central Arkansas. Coldwater discharge from Greers Ferry Dam created coldwater habitat that was less suitable for native sportfish species.
The AGFC began stocking trout into Greers Ferry Tailwater in 1966 to mitigate the loss. Rainbow trout were first stocked into the system in 1966. Brown trout were introduced in 1977 and have established a self-sustaining wild population. The Little Red River is home to the current 4-pound test line class world record brown trout of 40 pounds, 4 ounces caught in 1992.
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Congratulations on their intelligent decision to rid their lands of this highly destructive invasive-species, but they will quickly find that trapping them just won’t work. Trap & kill failed to curb cat populations just as much as trap & sterilize is an even bigger failure. Any trapping method used just cannot catch-up to cats’ breeding rates. Especially a man-made invasive-species like these cats that can breed 2-4X’s faster than any naturally occurring cat species. The ONLY action that man has ever done which can eradicate a species in the wild fast enough is “Hunted to Extinction” (or extirpation of all outdoor cats in this case). This is a hard cold fact. Using a mistake of human behavior in the past and employing it as a viable solution to clean up this man-made ecological disaster of today. Fighting fire with fire if you will. Shoot-on-sight is the ONLY method that is faster than these cats can out-breed and out-adapt to. The phrase known ‘round the world never became “trapped to extinction”—because trapping is too slow to cause the now-needed results.
It worked on my land. May it work as fast and as inexpensively where you live as well. I, for one, know that NO cat will ever leave my property and ever become a problem for anyone or anything else in the world again. I only wish now that all others were as respectful and responsible of their planet and neighbor as I have learned to be. And contrary to cat-lovers’ oft-spewed and relentless pack of lies, their “vacuum effect” is a bald-faced lie. I shot and buried hundreds of cats on my land over two years ago. NONE have replaced them in all this time. Simple reason being: CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of every last one and there’s none there to attract more of them. If you want more cats, allow even one of them to stay around, more will find you. Should even ONE cat ever step paw on my land ever again? Shoot-on-sight A.S.A.P. (and bury them to protect wildlife from cats’ diseases even after they are dead). Because if I don’t I’ll be up to my a** in cats again, with them destroying all my wildlife and spreading their deadly diseases everywhere again—back to square one. That’s never going to happen, EVER AGAIN.
It took me 15 years to learn this lesson. I tried to reason with cat-lovers all that time, trying to be respectful and “nice” about it. Asking cat-lovers to stop their cats solved absolutely nothing and only made matters worse and worse. That’s a lesson that I will never forget. No amount of being “nice” is going to solve an ecological disaster of this magnitude. The time for being “nice” to cat-lovers is OVER, DONE, FINISHED. You don’t ask your local career-thieves how to safeguard your valuables, just as you don’t ask a delusional invasive-species advocate how to protect your native wildlife. Learn from this. Don’t make the same mistake I did by trying to reason with cat-lovers. Just do what needs to be done and there’ll be nothing to argue about. Simple as that.