As I stated when I posted the link, it’s important to note that in that review, “unowned cats” INCLUDED farm/barn cats. Many on this forum might regard those as pets, but that is not the way “pets” was defined in that particular data review.
And again, it’s not focusing “only” on anything. It’s impossible to study (or solve) everything at once and such a noisy dataset would only produce meaningless gibberish, so you have to decide which specific questions you want to ask in order to get a meaningful scientific result. I think everyone on here knows that, but it’s also human nature to not like what you don’t want to hear, so it becomes an attempt to dismiss said undesired conclusion.
Not picking you particularly, S1969. But it’s also not really possible for anyone to be perfect & have no impacts on anything unless they are dead. And dead people are notoriously poor about sharing the ways in which they have provided benefit to wildlife. So yes, I own a farm and yes, I keep horses on it (2 on 10 acres). But I do as much as I can to mitigate the fact that I DO take up space in the world and I DO selfishly use resources to stay alive – I fence my horses out of the creek, I leave the riparian area undisturbed, I do not bush-hog low areas in spring & early summer breeding periods, I make & leave brushpiles for birds/herps/small mammals, I do not use chemicals such as herbicides/pesticides on my property, I encourage diverse vegetation for wildlife habitat, I actively discourage/remove non-native species, I do not have any outdoor pets except the two horses, I do not cause outdoor light pollution at night, etc. This is not say that I am any kind of saint, it’s just an illustration of the myriad voluntary ways a landowner can make active choices to protect & improve the quality of wildlife habitat available. Are there things I could do better? Certainly. Someone pointing them out is not them saying “you are a bad person,” it’s simply saying, “here is a way in which you can do better.” As I consistently tell my employees, I can’t know what I need to change unless you tell me, so I encourage that communication. There’s no good reason to be afraid of a challenge to improve.
