One of the newer strategies in reaching a no-kill quota is to remove surrendered cats from an animal shelter and release them into community cat colonies. The notion is that it is better to allow them a chance to live wild than to kill them. This strategy is good for the shelter’s statistics by allowing the shelter to show them in the live release column.
At odds with this strategy is the placement of the cats into circumstances in which the cats might die from harsh winter weather or be eaten by coyotes. Either way, the cats’ deaths do not negatively impact the shelter’s statistics. The more cats you remove from the shelter, the better the live release rate becomes. The bad news is that not everyone will believe that this is a humane solution. The good news is that no matter how much the cats suffer in death, the shelter statistics will look good.
Even if the shelter is maintaining the colony as it should by feeding the cats off of the ground and creating escape routes to keep the cats safe, the colony is going to naturally attract wildlife into the area. The colony will become an attractant for racoons, skunks and coyotes.
Areas that did not have to deal with nuisance wildlife will begin to experience problems. It is easy to convince a community to ignore minor wildlife intrusions, but as the cat colonies grow, the nuisances caused by wildlife will also grow.
A shelter’s no-kill strategy can lead to neighborhood pets being killed due to the attracting colony. The problem with dealing with Mother Nature is that every time humans become involved, we tend to make things worse. We never seem to be able to see the bigger picture.