Alley Cat Allies contests Coleman's and Temple's figures and resents their implications. The real sources of native wildlife decline, she points out, are habitat loss and fragmentation as well as use of pesticides and other toxins. In 1970, when the study was begun by Luis Baptista, chair of the Academy's Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy, cats were relatively rare in the park. Then Baptista could identify 30 different white-crowns on Strawberry Hill. Now Bell is lucky if he can find one.
Females are especially rare.
Now they are virtually gone. First, it brings the cats together, and defines the nexus of their territory, which, the theory suggests, they will defend against new cats. Alley Cat Allies's stated policy is to reduce the number of cats in a colony through altering, adopting, and attrition, ACA's Robinson says. But in practice, critics say, many colonies remain stable or grow. Left on their own, cats don't congregate in high densities and do much less damage.