Cuddling cats in a protected bird sanctuary. The damage caused by good intentions

Not everything we believe to be right actually is, even if the thoughts that inspire us and drive us to act stem from the best of intentions. Indeed, the world is full of mistaken beliefs, and each person probably harbours more of them than they realise. The problem arises when, guided by a charitable spirit, we fail to realise we are causing harm but, on the contrary, driven by the tenacity of our own convictions, we perpetuate it. This is what happens when cat lovers provide food and shelter for cats in sensitive environmental contexts, such as nature reserves or wildlife sanctuaries.

The point is that the cat is an incredibly problematic animal for ecosystems, so much so that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed it among the ‘100 most harmful species in the world’. Comparable to the blue crab or the coypu. Why is that, you might ask? After all, we’re used to thinking of cats as pleasant pets; when we see them on screen, they’re just cute, funny kittens. The reality, as mentioned, is very different from what one might imagine. Cats, in fact, are animals that continue to hunt even when fed by humans. The fact is that this animal has only recently become part of our environments and, as it has colonised them quickly and without difficulty, the animals it hunts have not developed the strategies needed to escape it.

A study published in "Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution", involving several Italian, Spanish and Portuguese universities and research institutes, investigated the impact of domestic cats on Italy’s native wildlife. The findings revealed that these animals are responsible for preying on species considered to be threatened and that their presence may even drive some of them to extinction. These findings are widely confirmed in the scientific literature, to the extent that the Polish Academy of Sciences has declared domestic cats to be an ‘alien and invasive species’. The Australian government takes a similar view; indeed, estimating that cats “kill over one and a half billion native mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs, and one billion one hundred million invertebrates every year”, thereby contributing “to the extinction of over twenty species of Australian mammals”, it has launched a campaign to limit their numbers.

But where is this heading – what may seem like a gratuitous anti-cat tirade? Just a little more patience, please.

To the south of Sardinia lies a small island with a curious history: the island of San Pietro, which, despite being Sardinian, is considered a Ligurian linguistic enclave. The reason for this curious circumstance is linked to the arrival of its last inhabitants, who landed there in the first half of the 18th century. They were Genoese but did not come from Liguria; rather, they came from Tabarka, a Tunisian island. They were there for commercial reasons, but when, for political reasons, their stay became untenable, King Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy allowed the exiles to settle on an uninhabited island within his kingdom – namely, the island of San Pietro.

In the westernmost part of the island lies a headland, Capo Sandalo, a place which, thanks to its strategic position, serves as a resting and nesting site for various species of birds. One species in particular arrives on these rocks every summer after setting off from Madagascar: the Queen’s Falcon. This bird of prey breeds exclusively on Mediterranean cliffs. For this reason, the area is a permanent wildlife sanctuary managed by Lipu. The problem arises because human compassion – that irrepressible urge to do good – has failed to grasp that the presence of cats in this place is simply impossible. Yet, kitten by kitten, the cliffs have become populated with cats. In fact, as is often the case, the cat colony was established by people with no training in natural history.

What better place than a nature reserve dedicated to bird conservation to breed cats – predators considered to be among ‘the hundred most harmful species in the world’? The answer to this question seems obvious; what is less clear, however, is why this was allowed to happen. After all, not everything we believe to be right yields good results.