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Showing posts from December, 2015

Cats and Birds

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The debate in New Zealand goes on about cats, and wild bird predation.  It's a rather uninformed debate, not helped at all by the poor standards of journalism these days.  Gareth Morgan, has been the leading activist on the 'no cat' side. His only tactic is to take a controversial position, and stick to it no matter what. This was particularly evident when he was interviewed recently , and kept banging on about how some Kaka chicks were in imminent danger as soon as they left the nest. No mention, that indeed one of these precious chicks has been killed - by humans feeding the mother the wrong thing , and that locals have plenty of cats, that have not taken on such large prey. Not at all constructive. It just makes people take sides, and refuse to discuss the issues and work together toward some practical solutions.  Fortunately, people have started talking about the issues, and solutions. Gareth, of course, seems to think this means his tactic works, but we could