The following article appeared in the March 12, 1992,
Philadelphia Inquirer -- page 1.  I pass it along with
no comment, other than that ferret lovers in Massachusetts
& California may find this of interest given what they've
been having to deal with in their ongoing battles to
legalize ferrets in their states.  You won't see anybody
trying to ban cats and dogs over this!  (Chris, I'm
sorry about this being so long, but I felt this needed
to be shared.)
 
IN REFUGES, DOGS AND CATS TURN NASTY
By Walter F. Naedele
Inquirer Staff Writer
 
        On eastern Long Island, wild dogs keep chasing
sightseers off a federal wildlife refuge.
        West of Boston, domesticated dogs last spring
killed a day-and-a-half-old deer at a federal refuge.
        South of San Francisco, onetime pet cats -- turned
out, then turned wild -- are tearing to death endangered-
species birds on a federal refuge.
        And near Philadelphia International Airport, at the
John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, dogs from
neighboring homes are suspected of mauling young muskrats to
death.
        As spring approaches, newborn wildlife is especially
vulnerable, say protectors of the nation's wildlife.
        Wild dogs and cats are not the only predators that concern
them, but also usually gentle house pets out for a night's kill.
        "All refuges have the problem," said Edward S. Moses,
manager of Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, 18 miles west
of Boston.  "The most domesticated cat or dog, if given the
opportunity, will destroy wildlife."
        "They may be nice and cuddly in the house," said Richard
Nugent of the Heinz refuge, but instinct takes over "when they
go hunting at night. . . We see it every spring."
        Spring doesn't begin until March 20, but the canine and
feline hunters are up and out already.
        In the last week of February, Nugent said, "Two dogs were
seen teamed up; I didn't see them, but our maintenance guys did. . .
They were probably running deer."
        Last week, roaming the 1,200-acre swampland, Nugent came
across another dog, without tags or collar, that he suspected
might be wild and on the hunt.
        Where's the evidence that dogs are taking a toll on
wildlife?
        "We see the effect all the time, off and on," Nugent
said.  "You always suspect it when you see a chewed-up muskrat,
this time of year.
        "The young [muskrats] go off. . . just expanding their
ranges."  And, far from their usual hiding places, they make
themselves vulnerable.
        "You see puncture holes in their hides," he said.
"They've been shaken to death."
        Not only dogs bring death.
        "I've noticed quite a few cats," in the refuge, he said
in a recent interview.  "The assumption is they're in the process
of either birding or mousing for their meals."
        Nugent said he assumed that the cats were from the South
Philadelphia neighborhood that borders the refuge.  "They happen
to wander onto us.
        Cats Kill Rare Birds
        "It's a situation we have to live with," he said.  "You
can't go around killing people's house cats."
        At the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge,
federal agents sometimes do kill killer cats.
        "Our problem is mainly with cats that have gone wild,"
refuge manager Richard A. Coleman said.  "They're known to kill
and eat endangered California clapper rail, [a bird] about the
size of a chicken. . .
        "Now, only 300 to 400 rails remain in the entire world,
and they're only found in the San Francisco Bay . . .
        "Over the last 10 to 15 years, predation has had a major
impact," he said, "particularly caused by cats and red fox."
        Because the cats lack homes and owners, they are hunted.
        "In the last year," Coleman said, "we have removed 20 or 30
cats. . . We catch them in live traps usually and turn them over to
local animal shelters.  We have on occasion shot them."
        On Long Island, Barbara Pardo said, federal officials have
seen "cats and dogs, turned out for the night, chewing wildlife and
then returning to hearth and home."
        Pardo works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the
agency that manages the Long Island National Wildlife Refuge
Complex where she works.  The complex is a string of seven refuges
in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
        Visitors Threatened
        "Our biggest problems . . . have been packs of feral dogs,"
at the Wertheim refuge, neat the town of Shirley in Suffolk County,
she said.
        "We have heart of visitors and neighbors being run off, or at
least threatened, by packs of dogs."
        The wild dogs haven't killed off lots of wildlife.  "The
worst thing they do," she said, "is create disturbances that keep
wildlife away . . .
        "We've tried to go out and shoot them," she said, "but
they're very wary."
        In Sudbury, Mass., predators live not far from Edward
Moses' office.
        "I'm looking at a mount of a 1-1/2-day-old fawn," Moses
said in a phone interview, "that was killed by two dogs that live
at the end of the street here."
        The baby deer, now mounted in Moses' office, was killed
last spring, at a time when deer usually give birth, on the
federal refuge that Moses manages, not far from the Minute Man
Memorial in Concord, Mass.
        "Spring is a bad time of the year," he said, "probably
the worst because of the nesting period."
        Birds that nest on the ground or in bushes and shrubs close
to the ground, Moses said, make their eggs and young -- and
themselves -- vulnerable to cats.
        At the refuge near Philadelphia International Airport,
Richard Nugent tried to put it into perspective:
        "It's the balance of nature."
 
[Posted in FML issue 0231]