Sacramento County’s Bradshaw Animal Shelter is headlining a new feral cat rodent-extermination service for farms, businesses, and families in the county. The feral cats, which will never be domesticated safely enough to live with people as companions, are neutered, vaccinated, and given a GPS device for tracking. The cats are intended to bring down rodent populations in a cast-effective manner.
However, Roger Baldwin, a wildlife specialist at UC Davis, says that with the controlled feral cat community comes a unique problem: the feral cats, while hunting for pesky rodents, are also posing a threat to native wildlife and especially birds. While these cats certainly reduce rodent populations, the added threat of damaging native wildlife populations is best deterred through professional rodent control (editors note: such as by us here at Specialized Pest Patrol).