Thread by @reveal

1/ NEW with @AltaJournal:

@Disneyland’s feral cats are a beloved sideshow.

They’re also a public health threat, according to local officials whose job is to prevent plagues. revealnews.org/article/the-ha…

2/ People love the cats – so much so that they’ve created an Instagram account dedicated to them. instagram.com/disneylandcats…

And a Twitter account: @disneylandcats

3/ But health officials in Orange County say that the animals can spread flea-borne typhus, which in some cases can cause humans’ brains to swell, their organs to fail, and their blood to harden in their veins.

4/ In 2016, pest control specialists visited the park and found cats so flea-infested that the insects leapt onto the inspectors’ clothes.

Those fleas weren’t carrying typhus. But other fleas captured on a Disneyland opossum were.

5/ Health officials urged @Disneyland to remove the cats and stop setting out food for them. Disneyland officials said they’d take the advice into account. But public health officials continue to receive reports that the park is infested with feral cats kept alive by park staff.

6/ This battle is part of a larger debate raging across the country over a controversial animal control approach known as “trap-neuter-return,” or TNR.

7/ The idea is that feral cat populations can be reduced humanely by trapping cats, sterilizing them, releasing them outdoors and then setting out food for them for the rest of their lives.

8/ It’s immensely controversial.

Advocates say that if a population of sterilized cats is kept alive with cat food in a certain area, this population will edge out fertile animals. The area-wide lack of reproduction will cause the whole group to eventually die natural deaths.

9/ Meanwhile, wildlife biologists and natural resource managers say it’s causing an ecological disaster.

A @PETA animal control specialist told us it’s “not right, not natural.”

10/ A 2013 study from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute estimates that cats kill around 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals every year. insider.si.edu/2013/01/cats-k…

11/ David Graber, former chief scientist for the National Park Service’s Pacific West region, said feral cat feeding by TNR advocates is among the most significant invasive species crises that wildlife managers face.

12/ Yet despite a lot of evidence suggesting TNR is wreaking biological havoc and failing to control feral cat populations, its boosters appear to be winning.

400+ cities and counties across the U.S. have adopted the method over the past 25 years.

13/ We took a close look at one of those cities a few years back: Antioch, California.

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