Posted on 04/13/2007 8:33:45 AM PDT by BradtotheBone
GALVESTON — After devoting much of his life to protecting wild creatures, a prominent naturalist here now faces trial on a felony charge of cruelty to animals.
Jim Stevenson, 53, a well-known bird-watcher and founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, was indicted this week by a Galveston County grand jury on charges that he killed a feral cat Nov. 8 with a .22-caliber rifle.
"What really bothers me, this cat was down there killing endangered species of birds and others protected by law," Stevenson said in an interview Thursday. "Feral cats are not protected by law, and I stopped a cat from doing that and I get arrested."
Assistant District Attorney Bill Reed declined to discuss Stevenson's view of the law.
"All of those issues, I'm sure, will be flushed out in court," Reed said.
Stevenson, who has lived on Galveston Island since 1996, has traveled the world studying birds and published four books, including the Wildlife of Galveston. and publishes the Galveston Ornithological Society's quarterly newspaper, Gulls N Herons.
Despite his deep involvement with nature, or perhaps because of it, he has been accused of an aversion to feral cats because they prey on the birds he has studied.
Stevenson said the cat he is accused of killing had previously been captured and would have been euthanized had it not been spayed and and released.
Stevenson believes that there is no law protecting feral cats.
An official with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has said the law is unclear.
Although he admitted in a 1999 Internet posting to killing two dozen feral cats near his island home, Stevenson told the Houston Chronicle in November that he is fond of cats.
His arrest last year surprised and saddened many environmentalists.
"Jim Stevenson is not a bad man," Dori Nelson, chair of the Seabrook Eco-Tourism Committee, told the Chronicle soon after his arrest.
The arrest came after a toll-booth worker at the San Luis Pass Bridge told police that he heard two shots fired, then saw a white van speed away with Stevenson at the wheel.
One of the toll-booth employees, who had been feeding several feral cats and considered them pets, found the dead cat and pursued Stevenson. The employee said the cat already had a limp from an earlier bullet wound.
Stevenson is free on $10,000 bail. If convicted, he faces from six months to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
If there's a hungry coyote around, I'll feed it a feral cat!
Right on. Those responses make it clear there's no telling what any one of these do-gooders who puts animals on the same (or higher) level as human beings might do if 'provoked.'
I never saw a cat, feral or otherwise, $#!^ on my car. The more birds they get rid of, the better.
I don't think it's twisted. The feral cats are non-native and introduced by humans (and in some cases propagated by humans). If humans act to un-do their previous acts, the results of which they find to be deleterious, aren't they just recognizing and rectifying previous mistakes?
“Feral cats are like birds.....untamed and free to go where they want”
Not. Feral cats are not like WILD birds. Feral cats are neglected, diseased, and FERAL animals that have been bred for domestic lives and then been been cast -off from their natural state of human pampering. They are not a NATURAL part of our ecosystem and should be shot on sight. They spread disease and injury to our pampered domesticated cats.
Before you get all preachy: I have 3 cats, 4 dogs and 2 birds (and 3 children who some consider feral animals). They are loved and well cared for and all (’cept the kids) were taken is as strays.
When there’s a coyote in the neighborhood eating cats, cat people don’t use felony animal cruelty charges to protect the coyote. Instead, they cry for state animal control come in to protect fluffy!
But when their cats abandoned offspring are loose eating other people’s pet birds, the nutcase cat people then fantasize about torturing and killing anyone who would harm poor fluffy.
Feral cats wreck ecosystems. Native bird species do not.
Doesn’t sound like a feral cat problem, more like a feral people problem, and some postings here confirm it, imo. . ;-)
The less cats the better.
I hate grackles.
All grackles must die.
If it was “YOUR” cat....it wouldn’t be “feral” would it?
This one looks interesting for later reading. Bump. Might even be worthy of the not-a-ping list, I can’t tell.
Shudda used a subsonic .22 short.
But not on the toll booth collectors. Well, maybe not.
He will walk. (Write it down.)
We feed our birds faithfully, and we have many. We also have indoor/outdoor cats. But in spring and summer when the birds are mating and nesting, we do NOT let the cats out because the birds have no chance. But in fall, the cats are out.
Whew, that's amazing! Just don't understand people like you. I've got 3 feral cats that I've had for 5 years. They've become wonderful much loved pets.
Presuming you mean wild birds and not some of those vast flocks of escaped macaws I've seen...
The big difference is that the birds are supposed to be there.
The cats should be in an animal shelter or someone's house. If not, they are a nuisance species and should be eliminated like coyotes, etc.
Feral cats can be tamed. Some take longer than others.
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