Alley Cat Allies Condemns East Bay Regional Park District Vote to Recommend Policy of Shooting Cats

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Feb 26, 2021, 14:57 ET

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alley Cat Allies president and founder Becky Robinson today condemned a vote by a committee of the East Bay Regional Park District in California that recommends a policy of killing cats in the parks.

"It is unconscionable to think that any policy which allows for the lethal removal of cats, a cruel and ineffective practice which must be eliminated, could be adopted in the Bay Area," Robinson said. "The East Bay Regional Park District should be using independent research to form sound policies that rely on proven methods for the reduction of community cat populations, such as Trap-Neuter-Return. Moving forward as it did today amounts to making uninformed decisions to kill innocent animals."

Trap-Neuter-Return, also known as TNR, is the humane and effective approach that improves the lives of community cats, protects public health, addresses community concerns, stabilizes outdoor cat populations and helps cats and communities coexist. Through TNR, community cats are humanely trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated, eartipped for identification, and returned to their outdoor home.

"East Bay Regional Park District board members need to hear the voices of their constituents and reject this proposal condoning animal cruelty," Robinson added. "Enough is enough. The public was outraged to learn about the premeditated killing of these cats and has spoken out in overwhelming opposition to lethal policies in their parks."

Americans are compassionate and reject mass-killing. In a 2017 poll by Harris Interactive, 84 percent of Americans said they prefer that their community use tax dollars to adopt sterilization as its cat control policy instead of bringing cats found outdoors into shelters to be killed.

The District's Natural and Cultural Resources Committee voted on Feb. 25 to advance the "Free-roaming Cat Management Policy" to the full East Bay Regional Park District Board for a vote in a future meeting.

"We hope to have collaborative conversations with Board members about the dangers of this policy and effective measures to protect wildlife that do not involve rifles and bullets," added Robinson. "It's clear that there were legal violations in the development of this policy and we'll be pursuing all of our options to protect cats and the community in the East Bay Regional Park District."

Alley Cat Allies will continue to pursue justice for the cats who were shot to death, and policy changes to prevent such killings from happening ever again. Updates are available online at www.alleycat.org/EastBayParkCats.

About Alley Cat Allies
Alley Cat Allies is the leader of a global movement to protect cats and kittens. Now in our 31^st anniversary year, we are joined by more than 650,000 supporters worldwide.

Alley Cat Allies believes every cat deserves to live out his or her life to the fullest. We exposed an entrenched system in which animal control agencies and shelters have been killing millions of cats for over a century. Today, the programs we introduced in the United States are mainstream.

To achieve our goals, we collaborate with grassroots advocates, animal shelters, municipal managers, and lawmakers to replace deadly laws and policies with ones that protect cats. We defend all cats by offering cutting edge education online, in person, and through one-on-one dialogue. We advance lifesaving innovations such as Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and Shelter-Neuter-Return (SNR), high-quality, high-volume spay and neuter, microchipping, anti-declawing legislation, and any program that best serves the interests of cats.

Our website is www.alleycat.org, and we are active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

SOURCE Alley Cat Allies