Return of the Feral Cat Bill — UT HB210
You thought… a packed public meeting, thousands of letters, emails, and phone calls ended the madness and allowed understanding to prevail.
But no. The ugly bill is back. Utah HB210, allowing the shooting of suspected feral animals with legal impunity, has been restored in full, and it has made it past the House and into the Senate. If it isn’t stopped, this odious piece of legislation will allow cat, dog, and pigeon shooting in any area of Utah where firearms can be discharged.
We have been through the language of this bill before. Here’s the reality that this bill denies:
Believing an animal is feral does not make it ethical to shoot that animal.
Removing and killing cats is inhumane and ineffective for controlling feral populations.
Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) is the only ethical, effective, and cost-effective means of controlling feral colonies
We can’t give a pass to those who would use pigeons or someone’s cat for target practice, claiming later that they believed they were humanely shooting a feral animal.
We don’t know what unnatural deeds are being done in Utah’s lawmaking process to resurrect this bill, but it needs to be stopped, once and for all.
Please:
Contact the Utah Senate and urge them to vote against HB 210. Click here to send a message
Contact Governor Herbert and tell him you do not support this bill, and it must be stopped
Support SB 57, which codifies community cat programs that use TNR.
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1 Comments
On March 11, 2011, Catherine Burt wrote:
UPDATE: The Utah Senate has approved SB 57, favoring TNR solutions for feral cats - and left HB 210 behind.
We hope this is for good!
More information at the Salt Lake Tribune:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51404730-76/cats-feral-senate-shooting.html.csp