A dozen environmental and conservation organizations have sent a letter to the Teguise City Council opposing the new municipal ordinance that the Council is working on, which plans to enable volunteers to feed cats on public roads. These groups point out that they already submitted allegations to the document, which was submitted to public display in 2020, and now warn that they do not rule out even taking legal action “to guarantee both adequate protection of island biodiversity and the well-being of the cats themselves.”
In a statement sent by SEO/BirdLife, the associations point out that there is “a scientific consensus on the seriousness of the impacts caused by cats on native wildlife, especially in island environments, and that the municipality of Teguise includes protected areas of high ecological value”, some within the Natura 2000 Network, “the largest network of its kind in the world and which protects the most threatened species and habitats in Europe”.
Therefore, they consider that measure announced by the City Council to be harmful, as they believe it would encourage the presence of stray cats. “The City Council would be prioritizing a management system that does not have scientific support as a measure to reduce the impact of cats on biodiversity and that, furthermore, may mean less well-being for the cats themselves, given the living conditions outside the homes,” they argue.
On the other hand, they also remind the City Council that cat colonies “can pose a risk to the public health of the municipality since, in high concentrations, cats can be carriers of pathogens that cause various dangerous zoonoses for wildlife, as well as for human beings.” In fact, they maintain that “the General Council of Veterinary Colleges of Spain itself has indicated this in a recent report.”
In the allegations they presented two years ago to the ordinance, which has still not seen the light, these groups state that they proposed “alternatives for the management of cats, signed by different professionals in ecology and conservation, including Canary Island specialists in this problem.”
Among them, they defended that feral cats from Teguise should be "captured and removed from the natural environment, keeping them in facilities equipped for this purpose", that is, the municipal shelter or the Sara animal shelter, which usually has its facilities overwhelmed.
“Under no circumstances should they be returned to the natural environment, due to the serious impact they may have,” they added, demanding that “the numerous colonies of abandoned cats distributed throughout various points of the municipality of Teguise be removed from public roads, putting the specimens up for adoption, or isolating these colonies from the rest of the environment by building shelters to house them or proposing any other alternative that prevents abandoned cats from coming into contact with wildlife.”
The groups signing this document remind the City Council that it is “legally responsible for the environmental and health impacts that these cats cause in its municipal area”, and also that “there is abundant European, national and regional regulations that protect the biodiversity of the Canary Islands, something that the City Council must consider if it wants to conserve one of the most significant values of its municipal area, its Natural Heritage.”
Among the signing groups are ACBC, ATAN, Gohnic, SEO/BirdLife, Abeque, Agonane, Club de Actividades Subacuáticas Pastinaca, SECAC, Research Group on the Canary Hubara of the National Museum of Natural Sciences - Higher Council for Scientific Research (MNCN-CSIC) and Research Group on the Egyptian Vulture of the Doñana Biological Station - Higher Council for Scientific Research (EBD-CSIC). In contrast, animal rights associations such as Ademal had applauded that measure announced by the City Council.
