Megan
Gannon, News Editor
Date:
23 January 2013 Time: 02:37 PM ET
"Imagine
a New Zealand teeming with native wildlife, penguins on the beach, kiwis
roaming about in your garden. Imagine hearing birdsong in our cities."
This
is environmentalist Gareth Morgan's vision for his homeland, and to help make
it a reality, he has an appeal for his compatriots: Get rid of your cats.
Morgan's
newly launched campaign, Cats
to Go, is pushing for much tighter controls on New Zealand's cats, which
prey on native birds and are considered an invasive species on the island
country. He's not asking all cat owners to euthanize their beloved pets (though
his website says "that is an option"), but Morgan wrote in a Jan.
23 op-ed
in Wellington's Dominion Post that owners should acknowledge that they
are harboring "a natural born killer."
"At
the very least responsible people should consider not replacing it when it dies
and meanwhile either keep it indoors or invest in a cat-proof enclosure in the
backyard," he wrote. Morgan also suggested neutering and cat collars with
bells, and the campaign's website has a petition to lobby local governments to
require that all owners register their cats.
His
plea sparked furor among some cat
lovers and organizers working to prevent animal cruelty, but are the
ideas behind the campaign really that crazy?
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