In 1894, a lighthouse keeper named David Lyall arrived on Stephens Island off New Zealand with a cat named Tibbles. in precisely over a yr, the Stephens Island Wren, a unprecedented chicken endemic to the island, used to be rendered extinct. Mounting medical facts confirms what many conservationists have suspected for a few time—that within the usa on my own, free-ranging cats are killing birds and different animals by means of the billions. both alarming are the little-known yet in all probability devastating public well-being outcomes of rabies and parasitic Toxoplasma passing from cats to people at emerging charges. Cat Wars tells the tale of the threats free-ranging cats pose to biodiversity and public well-being in the course of the global, and sheds new gentle at the controversies surrounding the administration of the explosion of those cat populations.

This compelling e-book lines the old and cultural ties among people and cats from early domestication to the present increase in puppy possession, alongside the best way accessibly explaining the technology of extinction, inhabitants modeling, and pussycat ailments. It charts the advancements that experience resulted in our current impasse—from Stan Temple's step forward experiences on cat predation in Wisconsin to cat-eradication courses underway in Australia this present day. It describes how a small yet vocal minority of cat advocates has campaigned effectively for no motion in a lot an identical means that exact curiosity teams have stymied makes an attempt to curtail smoking and weather change.

Cat Wars paints a revealing photo of a posh worldwide problem—and proposes strategies that foresee a time whilst flora and fauna and people are not any longer liable to the affects of free-ranging cats.