22 Jan 2013
James Rambin / Views Editor
Considering that most college students appear to spend at least a quarter of their day browsing funny pictures of cats on the Internet, we don’t think this next news item is going to win New Zealand any favors.
Still, we must admit that we don’t really know a whole lot about the country. Rather than make some vague, rambling introduction about the Lord of the Rings film series using the nation’s green mountains and rolling fields as the setting for epic magical adventures, we’re going to confess our ignorance on this entire topic. There’s really no nicer way to say it, and we’re very sorry.
That being said, the latest news from the land of the Kiwis doesn’t exactly educate us on the country’s finer points, unless you really, really hate cats.
Gareth Morgan, a New Zealand environmental advocate, recently launched an online campaign devoted to one goal and one goal only: total feline genocide.
But don’t tell the Internet to grab their torches and pitchforks just yet, because Morgan isn’t just a mustache-twirling villain from the world’s worst Saturday morning cartoon—he’s got his reasons, strange as they may be.
Morgan wants to eradicate the domestic cat from the entire country to ensure the safety of local birds, and claims that a rampage of domesticated cats has wiped out many of New Zealand’s unique avian species, and that the local ecosystem’s only hope is an all-out war against the cutest, cuddliest little bird murderers you’ve ever seen. Otherwise, the birds will continue getting the short end of the food chain.
He’s actually got a point, in a way—apparently cats have contributed to the extinction of six species of birds in the country so far.
But Morgan isn’t facing a friendly audience no matter how many birds the Kiwi felines eradicate, because New Zealanders are statistically the biggest cat fanciers on the planet. In fact, nearly half the country claims to own a cat, putting the number of four-legged fiends inside the country’s shores at approximately 1.4 million.
We don’t mean to point fingers—or paws—at this rogue environmentalist, but he definitely needs to change his delivery if he doesn’t want to lose lots of friends, furry or otherwise. It’s one thing to encourage pet owners to spay or neuter their cats to reduce the population to a reasonable size, but Morgan takes it a bit too far by also recommending euthanasia.
It seems like he started out with a good idea, then spent a little too much time in solitude among the birds for his own good. We’re not naming any names, but we hear New Zealand has a sizeable population of migratory cuckoos.
