This is an increase of more than 40% over a year. “The controversial competition, which allows children to hunt cats to win cash, has produced its biggest haul yet with around 340 felines killed.” announcement The Guardian the day after this great battle of the southern winter, which ended on Sunday, June 30, in the Canterbury region, in the center of the New Zealand archipelago.
This is an annual hunting campaign aimed at so-called wild animals “pests” for the ecosystem: deer, pigs, ducks, opossums, rabbits and… cats, since last year – mainly cats “wild”, born tame but returned to the wild, usually after being abandoned.
Asked by Guardian, event organizer Matt Bailey explains “The cat category was created to ‘regulate’ feral cats, which threaten native wildlife and carry diseases that endanger farmers’ livestock.” As a result, the New Zealand edition of the British daily continues, a cash reward of 500 New Zealand dollars (282 euros) will be awarded to the biggest cat killer. Whoever catches the biggest cat receives a bonus of 1,000 dollars (565 euros).
Cruelty and violence
Just over 1,500 people took part in the event this year, almost a third of whom were under 14 years of age. The sign of success for Matt Bailey, for whom “Rural children grow up in an environment where animals are hunted, skinned, processed and eaten.”
A certain vision of life in the country, which is not to the taste of owners of domestic cats or, more generally, of defenders of the animal cause, who “claim it [ce concours] is cruel to animals, desensitizes children to violence and endangers domestic cats”.
Still going on Guardian, “Hunters and animal rights groups have one thing in common: calling for more emphasis on the responsibility of cat owners.” The paper cites the Animal Justice Party, an organization that believes other methods of managing cat populations should be explored, including spaying and neutering programs.
Head hunter Matt Bailey agrees: “Cats are top predators. If we want to get rid of these predators, it’s time to put an end to the flow of people breeding cats and leaving them in the wild.”
