I have provided extensive references for everything I said. Please read them before typing out your gut response.
While cats, in general, are a threat to birds, these particular cats were not a threat to these particular birds.
Anyway, here you go (from Nature, not mv-voice) https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
> free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals
Please read these points carefully:
1. While cats, in general, are a threat to birds, the cats managed by the TNR program on Google Campus were not a threat to burrowing owls in the Shoreline park;
2. Shutdown of the TNR program resulted in the increase of the feral cat population, and had no positive impact on the owls;
3. The primary threat to the burrowing owls is human interference and destruction of habitat. These birds are not particularly threatened by stray cats in the first place.
4. Saying that the general statement applies to a particular case without looking at the facts is a fallacy.
TL;DR: "cats are a threat to birds" doesn't imply that my house cat in the US is a threat to kiwis in New Zealand.
Do you think that you can somehow generalize from that to NYC?
Cats usually won't tackle rats, this is even mentioned in the article.
Joking aside, cats aren't going to be very inclined to head into a lair to pick off their young.
For example, while cats might kill a lot of animals in settled areas like NYC that doesn't at all mean that species are endangered as a result of it. Birds don't exclusively live in human settlements and their continental populations might barely be affected by cats as there are sufficient areas outside of human settlements where feral cats are simply non-existent or at least not a problem.
Furthermore, the decline of birds is almost entirely human made - no one doubts this. Habitat loss and insect decline. Reducing the cat problem will simply not have a notable impact at all. Yes, millions of birds are killed by cats but what does that mean in the grand context if billions and billions of birds are killed by humans? It's a drop in the bucket and not worth the effort and I would ask ornithologists to name species that have been wiped out by wild cats in a continental context and not just from Smallstown, Minnesota.
Disclaimer: island scenarios like New Zealand are different due to the locality of the problem.
It's like trying to save ants from some dude stepping on their streets once a day while ignoring a ravaging fungus that is destroying the colony from the inside. But here you are, saying "not stepping on the ant street is also helpful!". Congrats to saving 10 ants while the colony is being decimated by a fungus.
I don't know of any "cat breeders". They are just a resilient species.
I suppose we could make some sort of "equity" system for species based on an arbitrary metric, but that's closer to playing God.
Birds can fly, not really fair to the feline species concerning which places it's allowed, eh?
Zero cats should be allowed to exist in NA?
No open borders for cats!?
Zero non neutered cat should be allowed to exist in North America, correct.
Same applies to humans of non-native descent, I presume?
In the EU, a 2021 study of 378 bird species estimated that bird numbers fell by as much as 19 percent from 1980 to 2017. And that's not because of cats, feral or not.
I think we both know this person isn't supporting TNR for humans, don't be silly
FTFY.