Raquel Córdoba, spokesperson for ADEMAL, an association that fights against animal abuse, has denounced on the program Buenos días, Lanzarote de Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero the sacrifice of one of the cats from La Graciosa that have been captured using the TNR method.
Córdoba stated that "the Government of the Canary Islands has acknowledged this Wednesday the events and added that "we all know that with the new law, healthy animals cannot be sacrificed and the Government has excused itself by arguing that it was aggressive."
"But how can a wild cat that you put in a half-meter cage not be aggressive? This is a murder in every sense of the word what the Government of the Canary Islands has just done, and we are going to take legal action, against the Administration itself and the veterinarian who signed off on said death," declares the spokesperson.
In addition, due to this event, ADEMAL has called for a demonstration in Lanzarote on October 27th at 11:00 a.m. and will continue until 2:00 p.m. on Blas Cabrera Felipe Street, in Arrecife, with the slogan "No to the extermination of the feline population in the Canary Islands!" This gathering will also extend to the rest of the islands and will take place on the same day and at the same time.
Also, apparently the sacrifice of the cat has not been carried out in Lanzarote. "The sacrifice has been done outside of Lanzarote, and I have spoken with the councilor of the corresponding area of the Teguise City Council, and he is very saddened, and we also have the full support of Animal Welfare of the Cabildo," she says.
"In La Graciosa, for a year now, there has been a team of veterinarians implementing the TNR method, but not only are they sterilizing the cats, but they were also installing cameras to see if the predation was true, and to this day there is nothing. The cats in La Graciosa are in urban areas, there are no shearwaters or greenfinches there, no species are nesting. They are where people live and are fed and controlled by feeders," she explains.
Córdoba also doubted the reliability of the report published by groups of biologists and other scientists, ensuring that "the feces they have analyzed and in which they found a feather cannot support a report because a necropsy must be done because we don't know if that bird that had been eaten was dead, injured, or what."
"This report, which they have taken out again and again since 2022, although I wouldn't call a couple of inconsistent pages a report, veterinary colleges and associations described it as inaccurate and roughly done," she says. And according to the spokesperson, "all veterinarians agree that the TNR method is the only one that, when correctly applied, controls the populations of free-living cats."
"To all the people who do not belong to the scientific world, when we hear the word science, it seems that everything has to be straightforward, or at least it has always been that way. We also do not want to question a criterion of all biologists and experts in the field, but the report is very questionable," Córdoba concludes.