On the basis of 30 million observations by more than 30,000 birdwatchers, the ‘State of Indian Birds 2023’ exercise recently concluded that birds in India are faring poorly. Among many factors, the report acknowledged a silent bird-killer lurking in India’s urban areas: cats.
Cats may seem to pale in the shadow of the threats posed by forest degradation, industrialisation, and climate change, but conservationists know better. In the U.S. alone, free-ranging domestic cats have been estimated to kill billions of birds every year.
One study found that cats may be the “single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality” for birds and mammals in the U.S. Worldwide, free-ranging domestic cats have caused or contributed to dozens of extinctions of bird species recorded in the IUCN Red List.
