Sorry Luddy, it is a con job in my experience.

Yes it can work if whole but infertile males are in huge numbers, & still functioning males, like with fruit fly experiments.
However, if you look at horses & cattle, you will notice the castrated animals don't bother with the females, or the females with them. The limited number of whole males just serve the females on offer.

This would mean it could only work if the males were whole, but their sperm was infertile. Surely a long term contraceptive would be a better choice?

I am pretty sure this happens with dogs & cats too, however I have not had one whole male in a large population of fertile females to observe in these. In those I do have castrated males show no interest in the odd fertile female that appear occasionally.

As I say, a con job, probably promoted by feminists. {did you like that one].

As I recall, trap, neuter, and release was first used in Europe to reduce the spread of rabies in foxes. The reasoning was that the main check on the fox population is the lack of viable breeding territories. Killing all the foxes would be impossible and also undesirable in Europe where they are a native animal. If you kill a fox, another fox quickly moves into its territory. If you do this on a wide enough scale you get large-scale migration of foxes (and rabies). The foxes are highly territorial, so if you trap a fox, neuter and vaccinate it, and then release it again, it will continue to defend its territory against other foxes, preventing them from using its resources for breeding.

Most sources dealing with this strategy for feral cats say that it is a waste of time and money, essentially just a sop for people who don't like the idea of feral cats being killed. What we really need is a biological control for the feral cats, with vaccination available for domestic cats. Future problems could be prevented by requiring people to neuter their cats, except for licensed breeders, with the fertile cats kept confined.

Keeping all the cats indoors (except near wildlife sanctuaries) would be counterproductive, especially in an urban environment. Without predators, we would be knee deep in small animals. While the native predators can do the job in the wilderness or out in the countryside, most cannot tolerate close proximity to people. When we and some of our neighbours got cats, problems with rats, mice, and mynah birds were significantly reduced. Rats in the urban environment aren't exactly great for pre-schoolers either.

Ludwig,

Let's say we can get a thousand trappers out every night and that they average one cat each every night.

That's 365,000 cats per annum (disregard leap years), now 365.000 into 15,000,000 is a bit over 41 times; so let's say 40 years to trap and neuter 15 million cats.

In the meantime the whole males are tomcating to their hearts content every night and if the birthrate (at an absolutely ridiculously low figure) is considered to be 1,000 a night then the program would achieve Zero, that is mark time, however if the birthrate was 2,000/night then it would be going backwards.

The clown that raised this in the NSW Parliament is merely going through the motions of being seen to be doing something for his more stupid constituents, unfortunately even this costs taxpayers money and wastes time.

Common sense has been rendered neuter in the above.

Just to add that as well as infertility, neutering male cats appeals to cat owners because the neutered cat is NOT marking territory and defending it.

Unless of course these fools are going to have vets performing vasectomies and tubal ligations. However, fighting, wandering and spraying are arguments used to support TNR of ferals in built-up areas and why feral cats are euthanised.

Another politician chasing cheap headlines.

All good points in your last two posts, Beachy. You, Is Mise and Hazza are probably right.

But what irks me is that too many people are willing to just totally dismiss ideas like this straight away without giving them the sort of thought that you have here.

There are lots of things which might sound a bit whacky to start with but which may have some merit when you look at them a bit more closely.

We need to encourage the putting forward of all manner of ideas, and to not stifle them by simple up-front condemnation, thus putting people off expressing their ideas in the first place.

If we were to do that, we would be working towards supporting the narrow, entrenched and very largely ineffective ways of doing things.

Ludwig,

Thank you too for your very reasonable consideration of alternative views.

I sense that this politician is cruising, piggybacking on the superficial and populist hipster mantras of his predecessor, Ms Clover Moore. Politicians have very handsome remuneration and other benefits and the taxpayer should be requiring as a minimum, what they expect of a an executive in private industry.

I don't know why more people don't see the connection between continual dips into the bucket to placate interest groups (for precious little return in measurable outcomes) and compromised essential services (no money!), for instance. I have seen money saved by Councils doing very clever things to save dollars here and there, for example advertising on bus shelters paying for their upkeep and new shelters, but some fool of a Councillor then blows several hundred thousand dollars on idiotic 'traffic calming' concrete islands and speed humps that damage wheel alignment even at slow speed.

Politics really isn't a game and politicians should be held to account for their output and the quality of it.

The bucket of taxpayers $$ is limited and there are far too many buy-offs of noisy activists to win a hopeful percent of votes, or more likely to shut-up them up and the feckless tabloids media too.