comment: >
  
  !Delta, I suppose.
  I suppose how you want feral cats to be treated depends on your view on them. My opinion is that they aren't a part of the natural ecosystem, it's a sign of humans neglecting cats that feral cats (and other domesticated animals) exist in the first place, cats are ideally an inside pet akin to ferrets, and the ideal end goal is that no cat live on the streets and lack a home. That's a huge pipe dream because feral cats are both normalized and there are just way, way too many of them in the world for them to magically disappear in our lifetime.
context: /u/Gallantpride (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
  All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
  Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
  ^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >
  
  How often do super generalized superlative statements end up being meaningfully true after being applied to the hundreds and hundreds of different circumstances and contexts that occur in real life?
  Hunting and culling overpopulated species is an effective method of animal control, but it isn't the "best". Because the "best" method of population control is going to be context specific and likely use multiple methods to solve the problem at several different points in the life cycle of the species in question. >
  
  !Delta
  Maybe using "best" was incorrect since it's too general and vague a word. There's always room for nuance. >
  
  Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/severaltensemoments (1∆).
  ^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >
  
  I read through the other comments including the Political Correctness issues derailing conversation. May i ask how do you objectively determine when any type of animal group is overpopulated?
  OP's first examples are invasive species. Isn't that a different topic than overpopulation?
  Did you know the USA culls up to 500,000 coyotes annually?
  Deer Association says 
  
  Deer hunters in the United States harvested an estimated 6.3 million white-tailed deer in the 2020-21 hunting season
  
  What if i said one problem solves the other? Stop hunting deer and the coyotes won't need to be culled.
  ASPCA says:
  
  Each year, approximately 920,000 animals are euthanized (390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats)
  
  What if this is the root of the invasive species problem, around the entire globe? Why can't we solve this?
  Maybe we have to change our behavior and start asking the hard questions about what's wrong with us. >
  
  What's your solution to the mass dog and cat euthanization? There's too many animals but not enough good homes for them. I don't even think there's enough rooms in shelters and foster home for all the pets that exist. 
  The solutions that comes to mind for me are putting stronger regulations on who can breed their pets and make laws in place that require mandatory altering unless you pay a fine or are a reputable breeder. This will be hard to mandate, especially in the US where we won't even ban declawing cats. There's little the law and government does when it comes to animal ownership. It's usually legal to even keep your dog tied out all day, as long as it has access to water, food, and shelter. There's a big "a pet is basically an item" and "my pet, I do what I want" viewpoint with pet ownership. >
  
  There are 2 more ways -
  (i) Sterilizing the animals so they cannot breed.
  (ii) Create decoys, ie, generating "artificial" females like dolls and leaving them in the wild, so males mate with them instead of real females (This can be done with insects).
  Both these methods are highly effective. >
  
  I am terrified of the thought that a child might find a stuffed rabbit doll filled with rabbit cum and play with it >
  
  The problem with hunting (and TNR) as solutions is the same problem with Thanos's MCU snap. You remove a bunch of animals from the competition, but that lessened competition creates a vacancy that will be rapidly filled by the ones that escaped your attention breeding more.
  The problem with exploding animal populations is the lack of a predator species or an environmental hazard that continuously reduces the population and prevents it from rebounding. Without that, hunting and TNR style solutions are basically just a stopgap that you need to use continuously and indefinitely.
  I don't know if it's held up over time, but about ten years ago there were some studies about TVHR in cat populations (VH is vasectomy/hysterectomy) being more effective at long-term reduction of feral populations. Because the procedure doesn't affect their hormonal cycles, cats remain competitive and territorial even after they lose the ability to reproduce. And that, in turn, makes it less likely that cats who weren't captured and treated will reproduce. 
  And the other solution isn't hunting but complete eradication (in the region where they're invasive). But that's particularly difficult, as hunting is never going to catch everything, and the few methods we have that are more effective (e.g., poison) aren't targeted and catch species you don't want to kill off. 
  Or you can go with the Simpsons method. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death. >
  
  !delta
  You didn't completely change my view but you taught me some good arguments against the argument. Hormonal alternatives and altering may be solutions for mammals, but I'm not sure about other types of animals. >
  
  Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Not-your-lawyer- (72∆).
  ^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >
  
  
  Are there any other options that actually work?
  
  Birth control. Works great. 
  Also, unless you're willing to apply this to people.. >
  
  And people are supposed to round up all the bugs, fish, rabbits, boars, cats, etc and mass neuter them?
  Most countries can't even make it "mandatory" to neuter your cats or dogs, nevermind a government mandate for doing this to invasive animals and pests. Many animals literally can't even be altered. >
  
  
  And people are supposed to round up all the bugs, fish, rabbits, boars, cats, etc and mass neuter them?
  
  When did I say anything of the sort? I said birth control. >
  
  What do you consider "birth control" when it comes to animals? How else do you stop them from breeding without performing surgical or hormonal procedures? >
  
  Are non-invasive, hormonal options a solution for most species? What are the costs and cons vs the pros? >
  
  
  I am talking about animals breed quickly, co-exist near or with humans, have few to no predators to naturally keep down the population, and are often invasive. Rats, feral cats, feral dogs, feral boars, wild/feral rabbits, deer, weasels, bugs, fish, reptiles, etc.
  
  Your plan for dealing with mosquitoes or locusts is to "hunt them down"? Open season no bag limit on mosquitoes?
  Hunting doesn't work for everything, you will need things like poison and introducing predators to keep them in check. >
  
  I was going to use "culling" but I thought "hunting" sounded better as a title. I meant it as a general term rather then literally. 
  I'm referring to any sort of extermination method that's considered suitable for the species and environment. >
  
  What are we going to do with all these humans then? >
  
  What does that have to do with what I said, though? That's a different topic. >
  
  Suppose humans reach a point where there is no longer enough water for everyone. That would be considered overpopulated. You think hunting/exterminating them is the best solution? >
  
  You can't compare human eugenics to animal population control. >
  
  Does this include humans? >
  
  No, we're talking about non-human animals obviously. >
  
  Why obviously? It's patently obvious that there's only one overpopulated species on the planet - us.
  Never mind the sheer arrogance of us, the destroyer of the planet we all rely on, to deign itself the arbiter of what populations of other species are deemed too many. >
  
  That has completely different implications and reeks of eugenics. >
  
  Is eugenics only applied to humans? Aren't you advocating for animal eugenics and population control in your OP post? >
  
  Eugenics is largely a human concept. Humans have helped manage animal populations and bred animals for millenia. Something akin to dog breeding or deer hunting is not eugenics. >
  
  But what you are advocating in your OP is a cull based on our perception of there being too many of a population. >
  
  It’s unclear why you think this is moral for animal populations and not humans. 
  There are several corners of the planet with unsustainable population explosions in areas at climate change and famine risk, shall we begin the culling? It’ll be good for the species overall. >
  
  What major culture or religion do you think equates killing humans to killing animals?  Like on the same level? >
  
  Hunting as a solution to overpopulation just doesn't make sense. It's not effective, it causes animals unnecessary suffering, and it can have negative impacts on ecosystems. First of all, hunting isn't really a solution to overpopulation. Animals have high reproductive rates and can quickly bounce back from population losses, so hunting can actually make the problem worse. And even if it does decrease the population, it's not a long-term solution. The population will just grow again unless the root cause of the overpopulation is addressed.
  Plus, hunting is just cruel. It's one thing to hunt for survival, but it's another thing entirely to hunt for sport or to control populations. Animals deserve to live their lives without experiencing pain and suffering, and hunting causes both. And let's not forget about the impact on ecosystems. Hunting can disrupt the balance of predator and prey populations, which can have unintended consequences on other species. It's important to consider the bigger picture and think about the long-term effects of our actions.
  There are better alternatives to hunting as a solution to overpopulation. Population control methods like sterilization and birth control are more humane and can be more effective in the long run. Protecting and restoring habitat is also important for supporting healthy animal populations. It's time to start thinking about more compassionate and sustainable solutions. >
  
  Take a moment to think about how wild animals typically die. I don’t know that the cruelty/unnecessary suffering argument of hunting holds up after honestly reflecting upon that.  I’d rather die of a bullet than being mauled to death or dying a slow miserable death to sickness/injury. 
  (I’m a vegetarian of 15 years and I’ve never hunted—I’m saying this entirely in good faith.) >
  
  There are a lot of bad hunters out there and a lot of hunters that disrespect animals, but I've always heard pro-hunter people say that good hunters are usually environmentalists. >
  
  Yup, and that’s true for basically anything. Shitty people tend to be everywhere…The few hunters I know don’t take killing lightly and are conscious of trying to be as humane as possible. What’s of most importance to me here is that there is no good or bad in the animal kingdom. It is what it is, and what is, is a whole lot of suffering. Survival is high stakes—the natural world is a brutal, zero sum game. >
  
  One problem with extermination effirts is that you can't get them all. That's why there are rats all over NYC---of course they TRY to exterminate them! But rats are intelligent and become poison and trap smart, and then what can you do? Same with feral hogs. They're really smart. They're really tough. They're extremely difficult to trap, and shooting them doesn't always kill them. 
  Lacing food with birth control is probably the best option. Birth control won't make them sick so they won't get bait-smart, and the numbers can come down naturally. >
  
  The goal isn't always to kill every single animal. People aren't trying to make them extinct, after all. The main goal is to just decrease numbers. There are exceptions, though. Feral animals in particular shouldn't exist. >
  
  They shouldn't, but that ship has sailed. Literally, since rats and cats unintentionally came over on ships. 
  I think different kinds of animals require a different approach. 
  People like cute animals. Killing them will never be popular. You can preach your logic from every street corner but you just aren't going to change anybody's mind. And they will fight against kill campaigns. >
  
  There are so many barriers to helping cat overpopulation and the feral cat problem. It feels like a useless thing to combat since it's so normalized that cats be outside, cats free roam, "neighborhood" and "bodega" cats exist, etc. The most I can hope for is stricter laws on neutering cats. 
  People are much more lentient to dealing with other invasive animals though. >
  
  People have tried killing feral cats though, and it hasn't worked. Animal shelters in the US were killing 20 million animals a year back in the '80s. There were still cats everywhere.
  And we've gotten this far without spay/neuter laws in most places. I wouldn't mind having laws in place. But I think offering free/low-cost spay/neuter is a better use of funds than attempting to enforce such a law.
  Basically, treating pet-type animals as disposable doesn't encourage people to be responsible pet owners. >
  
  I feel like you are simplifying the issue. There are for sure cases where hunting is necessary, take deer hunting in the US. We essentially dwindled their natural predators (wolves) to such a degree, that many populations can no longer be kept in check without human intervention. 
  This is also true for released invasives from the pet trade, like lionfish or the huge boas in florid, and things like that. I think direct hunting is usually good in cases where humans have fucked up. 
  It's interesting that you bring up rats because we don't actually hunt rats. We poison them. And because they lack the reflex to throw up, they die. This is actually a big problem because whatever eats the rat will ingest the poison, and whoever eats them will too. Stuff like this is known as biomagnification, where toxins build up in whoever is at the top of the food chain. I could get into it more, but this is just really bad on many levels. 
  It would also be kind of impractical to have people "hunt" rats on our own. 
  Animals have evolved and adapted to their environments for all of history, and the new ecosystem of the city has only existed for a blink in evolutionary time. In fact, the discipline of urban ecology  has only existed for like 30-40 years. We are still in the stage of learning about the urban ecosystem, so there just needs to be a period of trial and error to figure everything out. 
  In the past, there are several examples of humans mistakenly importing the predator of an invasive species to deal with the issue, but then those predators became invasive themselves, causing more issues. 
  This deal with importing TNR cats into urban systems is just a part of our process in learning how to coexist with the animals that were here before us. I honestly think this is a really smart way to try to deal with the issue because it tries to address 2 issues at once: the rat problem and the problem of feral cats. 
  A lot of scientists are working on monitoring the ecological effects of TNR (including an old co-worker), but only time will be able to give them. Since the cats are nurtured, it is kind of like a safety for these studies. If we find out it doesn't work or is harmful, we have about \~15 years max of consequences, compared to cases where invasive species permanently cause problems. And, if it doesn't work, we can investigate why, and move forward with a more informed approach. 
  Essentially my critique comes down to how in your point is a generalization that goes too far and becomes inaccurate.