>>8453297Yeah, they are controversial here. Almost all of the controversey is in the name of endangered native birds. There are a lot of feral cats that live in the forests and eat them.
To combat that, a lot of the conservationists try to breed those birds on some of the islands away from the mainland, namely on chatham island because it's somewhat large and a good few hundred kilometres east of the mainland.
There have been a number of native species of birds that are now extinct due to introduced predators, such as Huia, and there are other native birds that are critically endangered, like the Orange-Fronted Parakeet. You pretty much can't see Orange-Fronted Parakeets in the wild these days; only in Zoos.
In saying that though, putting out traps to kill cats, especially in a sub-urban etting, seems like an inordinate way to protect wildlife. It seems to me that a lot of the people that do that do it simply out of spite.
