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At Neighborhood Cats, we encourage feral cat activists who want to implement TNR on a community-wide scale to take a proactive approach to working with local government. Here's why: 1) If your TNR program is successful and grows, government involvement is almost inevitable. Feral cats touch on a variety of municipal issues, including animal control, public health and wildlife conservation. Sooner or later, as your program becomes more visible and known, someone in local government is going to notice and start asking questions. By taking the initiative and not waiting to be put on the defensive, you can better educate and shape opinions, thereby improving your chances for favorable policies. 2) Many towns and counties have laws that are potentially unfavorable to the practice of TNR, such as pet limit laws, cat licensing, bans against feeding animals outdoors, trapping restrictions, and more. These laws often, if unintentionally, include feral cat caretakers in their scope. To thrive on a community scale, TNR must be accepted by local government and made legal. 3) The support of local government can be enormously helpful in spreading TNR and gaining cooperation of residents. A visit from a public health official is usually all it takes to persuade a reluctant feeder to join in the sterilization effort. Access to public property can be gained and, as is beginning to happen more often, municipalities can be a source of funding. More than anything, local government can be a powerful problem-solving partner when the need arises. Efforts to persuade local officials to back TNR must be pursued according to a carefully thought out plan. In our experience, there are definite "do's" and don'ts." For example, appeals to the cats' welfare must be put aside in favor of arguments about population reduction and nuisance abatement. Proper documentation and data must be presented. Clear, straight-to-the-point explanations must be quickly offered to common questions like "why not just remove the cats?" or "why don't we ban their feeding?" To learn more about plotting your strategy, we recommend viewing, "Persuading Municipal Officials to Go with TNR," a presentation by Neighborhood Cats' Bryan Kortis that was made as part of PetSmart Charities' ongoing series of online animal welfare seminars. The hour and half talk discusses and illustrates how to be an effective advocate for TNR with government officials. To view the presentation at no cost, click here, then click on "Attend a Session" in the lefthand margin, then on "Recorded Sessions." Talks are listed in alphabetical order. You'll need to download the Webex software before listening if you haven't already. As always, we're here to offer whatever advice we can based on our years of experience working with government officials. Just click on "contact" and let us know how we can help. history | about | board | back to top |
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caretakers
have been emphasized. In recent years, there has been a growing
awareness that TNR can also benefit the community as a whole by reducing
the number of feral cats and in turn reducing overcrowding in shelters,
nuisance complaints, public health risks, wildlife predation and other
community-level concerns.