GBR Press: Attack of the cat lady

[wes_von_papineäu]

Dear Newt Friends;
Please note, the following is my own opinion and in no way reflects the ideas or attitudes of Caudata.org.
Fighting uphill as we all do against a variety of multi-pronged assaults against animal living space and related concerns; this sort of thing (see item link following) really frustrates me ... critter people turning against each other to claim that their animal care concerns are more important than anybody elses.
Instead of working their own projects, they attempt to claw other group's critter initiatives down into their own lack of success.
While I do have sympathy for abandoned and feral cats (one lived happily with me for years), I'm unsure of the link between the legal requirement to protect an endangered species and the position offered by this faction that they deserve a chunk of those same animal recovery funds.
You might want to follow the press link to the home page of the protestor to see the 'tone' set when talking about the newt-saving initiative.
Sometimes, the animal concern/care community is its' own worst enemy - we're so very prone to 'divide-and-conquer' ... and some of it self inflicted!
Thus endith my rant.
respects, Wes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/26/ncats126.xml

 

[Mark]

I had a little rant on the Daily Mail's news coverage of the same story. I wonder if they will post it (comments are moderated)?

She condemned a decision to spend a reported £70,000 to rescue a group of 150 newts from another part of the site. London mayor Ken Livingstone is a famous newt-fancier. She said: "They have spent £70,000 moving 150 newts from the site, but they won't even give us the time to save the cats.

I suggest we all add our own comments to balance out the argument .
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments

 

[lims]

Am I right in thinking that if the ferrel cats were protected like T. Cristatus, that the cat people would have been allowd in quicker and would have saved some cats?
I cant get the first link to work.

Seems a bit unfair, but to be brutally honest there's loads of cats everywhere, and they are far less sensative (phsiologically)...meow, I have 2 back at my mam and dads house.. they dont mind being handeled as much as newtsmeow