Support Trap-Neuter-Return in Los Angeles!

Wild bird groups sued the City of Los Angeles in 2008 to stop its support of Trap-Neuter-Return. Trap-Neuter-Return is the humane approach to controlling homeless cat populations. It involves concerned citizens humanely trapping homeless cats, having them spayed or neutered, and then returning them to their location to live out the remainder of their lives. 

These bird groups sued the City, claiming that under California's Environmental Quality Act, the City could not provide promote TNR without an Environmental Study and Impact Report, based upon the utterly false premise that if the City promotes TNR, that means fewer cats will be turned in and killed in shelters, which means more cats left in the environment to kill birds.

Last week, after a summary trial, Judge Thomas McKnew, of the LA Superior Court, bought into this ridiculous argument and issued an injunction preventing any support of TNR for all of Los Angeles. 

The simple fact is that TNR does not produce more cats by "returning" them after spay/neuter surgery, as the wild bird advocates claim, since the cats were already there to begin with. TNR merely transforms cats already in the environment from being breeding cats into being sterile cats, thereby reducing their numbers over time. The consequence is clearly not adverse to the "environment." 

It is time for humane-minded, reasonable citizens of Los Angeles to speak out against this decision and do everything possible to show the Judge and the wild bird extremists that we are opposed to systematically rounding up and killing cats at our city shelters. We wholehearted, enthusiastic government support of TNR in Los Angeles as a means to control homeless cat overpopulation.

Without TNR, we would see more and more cats killed in shelters, while at the same time the homeless cat population would explode. Moreover, the impact of cats on bird populations is miniscule as compared to habitat loss, high rise windows, airplanes, weather and other predators, contrary to the claims made by many wild bird advocacy groups in their blind opposition to TNR.  

We ask the citizens of Los Angeles to show their support, and outrage over this unfortunate and ill-advised court ruling by signing the petition below. Stop the killing of homeless cats in Los Angeles and show your support for TNR!