In spite of you wishing nothing but tragedy and misery on your former neighbors, I am glad your home is OK.

Didn't Irene blow you away?

If refuge managers have the “best available science,” as is suggested here, they’re keeping it a secret. There’s certainly no evidence of it in their predator management plan (“plan” is, in fact, too strong w word for the document), published earlier this year (which, interestingly, doesn’t include any of the 7,000 photos described here.) • Two of the plan’s more egregious flaws: 1. The USFWS proposal to remove feral cats from the Keys through trapping is simply impractical. Indeed, such efforts have proven ineffective time and time again. “Successful” eradication efforts are brutal. Consider, for example, what was done on Marion Island, where—despite being only 115-square-miles in size, barren, and uninhabited—it took 19 years to eradicate about 2,200 cats. Using disease (feline distemper), poisoning, intensive hunting and trapping, and dogs. • Even if we set aside for the moment the cruelty involved, how would this be POSSIBLE in the Keys? And who would pay for it? • 2. If the cats WERE removed, the population of non-native rats would likely skyrocket—and decimate the very populations of native birds, mice, and rats USFWS is trying to protect. As would the use of rodenticides that they would use ordinarily to control the population of rats. These are well-known risks. • Not only does USFWS fail to address either point in their “plan,” they don’t even acknowledge that such challenges exist. Nor do they discuss their previous failed roundups (e.g., in 2003, USFWS paid USDA $50,000 to trap feral cats in the Keys—as I understand it, they trapped just 13 cats and several dozen raccoons). • But then, USFWS has been dishonest about this tax-funded witch-hunt along. And, more often than not, the media goes along with it. Indeed, this article would seem to make the point for me: “Research indicates that cat predation accounts for 50 percent to 77 percent of the deaths of Lower Keys marsh rabbits and Key Largo woodrats.” • It looks to me like O’Hara has his figures mixed up (perhaps because of the sources involved). That 77 percent figure, I presume, refers to the predator management plan: “…cats accounted for 77 percent of the mortality during a recent re-introduction of the Key Largo woodrat.” • From what I’ve been able to tell only 13 woodrats were included in the “recent re-introduction” effort. Ten were killed. (How they know with such certainty that cats were responsible remains unclear.) But TEN doesn’t quite fan the flames of a witch-hunt the way “77 percent of the mortality” does. • And the 50 percent figure is, I’m quite sure, a reference to Elizabeth Forys’ PhD work, done in the early 1990s on Navy-owned land on Boca Chica and Saddlebush Key. She found that 13 of 24 rabbits monitored over the course of her two-and-a-half year study were killed by cats. • But when USFWS cites Forys’ work in their predator management plan, the story changed dramatically: “Free-roaming domestic cat predation accounted for 50 percent of adult Lower Keys marsh rabbit mortality during radio telemetry studies…” Again, they’re playing games with the taxpayers to whom they are supposed to be accountable. • One final point: Does anybody really think feral cats are going to be adopted? They will almost certainly be killed—as USFWS knows very well. Suggesting otherwise—no matter how often—will not change this. • Tackling the complex issue of feral cats in the Keys requires that the stakeholders—including, of course, the general public—be well informed. USFWS is clearly not going to do the job—it’s time for the media to start asking better questions! • Peter J. Wolf http://www.voxfelina.com