Early this month I attended The Outdoor Cat: Science and Policy from a Global Perspective. Held in Los Angeles, CA from 3-5 December 2012, the conference was organized by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and supported by the FoundAnimals.

This was one of the best conferences I have attended. Well organized and chock full of timely information, it cut to the heart of a divisive policy debate over outdoor cats and wildlife. In so doing, it may kickstart a more productive deliberation on the ecological, social and ethical reasons for addressing the issue.

I will not summarize the conference here. The program, paper abstracts, and slide shows from the conference will soon be available at the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy website. Manuscripts may also be published in a themed issue of an academic journal, and shared through blogs, websites and apps. I’ll make sure to post notifications when this comes to fruition.

Instead, I want to reflect on some of the ethical and policy aspects of the conference.

For well over a decade now, strident voices in the conservation biology and animal welfare communities have argued bitterly and fruitlessly over outdoor cats. Some conservation biologists have argued that cats are a mortal threat to wildlife, while some in the animal welfare argue that this scapegoats cats for a problem of human making. Both groups have become fixated on the efficacy of trap, neuter and return programs (TNR) in reducing cat predation and colonies of outdoor cats. Demagoguing is common amongst some individuals on both sides.

The organizers of The Outdoor Cat successfully cut through this acrimony in several ways.

First, the conference invited the right people to speak to this issue, and its overall take-home message was not cooked up ahead of time. The intention was instead to bring leading experts together and see if there were points of common ground.

The presenters shared perspectives from all sides of the issue, with an excellent balance between those speaking in defense of cats as well as those most concerned with biodiversity. Every speaker had significant and relevant academic and professional backgrounds (e.g. conservation and wildlife science, ethics, law, veterinary medicine), and represented a variety of perspectives from animal rights and animal welfare, to animal protection and conservation. Adding to this diversity was its global reach, providing insight on the experience and lessons of outdoor cat management from many places in the world. This was especially helpful as the challenges of managing cats with respect to biodiversity differ greatly from place to place across local, regional and global scale.

Significantly, while the loudest voices in this debate were invited to speak, they chose not to attend. In so doing, they provided an opportunity for others of good will and keen insight to talk honestly and productively together. I believe the organizers were disappointed with the absences at first, but came to appreciate how this contributed to the creation of a free space for constructive engagement.

Second, the conference correctly framed the issue as one that involved ecological, social and ethical dimensions. This framing was outlined in the morning of the first day, and the rest of the presentations and discussions quickly adopted these terms of debate.

David MacDonald of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit gave a fascinating overview of the felid family. He emphasized the evolutionary origin and biology of wild cats across the globe, and the complex ecology and ethnology of feral and tame house cats. In the process, he outlined both the hunting methods and prowess of outdoor cats, how this was associated with their body plans (e.g., small cats for small prey), and how this leads outdoor house cats to have a focused impact on small mammals, birds, lizards and snakes.

John Hadidian, Senior Scientist at HSUS, aptly identified the controversy over outdoor cats as a wicked problem in public policy. Wicked problems exist where there are divergent values, infighting policy communities, and technical fixes are absent. Solutions (such as they are) are driven primarily by context and community values as they are expressed through public policy. Outdoor cats exemplify a wicked policy problem by bringing diverse stakeholders into conflict over a wide range of ecological, social and moral values.

I sought to draw out the ethical concerns with their policy implications. The abstract to the talk captures this well, so allow me to simply quote it here.

Public policy is always “ethics writ large” with direct impacts on the well-being of individuals and communities. This is as true for animals and nature as it is for human beings, perhaps more so as neither animals nor nature can speak for themselves regarding environmental policy, social policy, or wildlife management. Managing outdoor cats is therefore as much a matter of ethics, as it is of science or politics.

From the standpoint of ethics, all cats are moral beings, meaning that their awareness and self-awareness (a.k.a. sentience and sapience) qualifies them for intrinsic moral value and membership in a more-than-human moral community. This is a community to whom people also belong by virtue of our own sentience and sapience. Acknowledging that we owe cats moral consideration does not, however, solves the question of “how we ought to live” with cats, much less make clear our responsibilities regarding vexing problems of biodiversity in which cats play a role.

To answer such questions, there are several established methods that may be used to explore the ethical dimensions of public policy. These include ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) research, interpretive policy analysis, and ethics briefs. Each of these methods is open ended in terms of issues, moral theories, and policy recommendations. Each is also well suited to interpreting our moral responsibilities to cats themselves, to the wildlife that can be their prey, to the ecological integrity of species and ecosystems, and to human communities.

Altogether, these ecological, social and ethical framings had a huge impact on the conference. They became touchstones for other participants to reference as they made connections between various presentations and discussion sessions. They also cut through the stonewalling of policy positions, frankly acknowledging that there is sometimes a problem between outdoor cats and wildlife, but solving those problems requires that we do right by both sets of creatures simultaneously. The questions is then not “who is right” about managing outdoor cats, but “who is right about what” in triangulating the sum of our wisdom on the problem.

Finally, we were particularly fortunate to have models of ethically sensitive management that seeks to meet our moral responsibilities to both cats and wildlife.

Kate Littin, who is the Senior Advisor for Animal Welfare in the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries, presented a model for outdoor cat management that emphasizes non-lethal measures and animal welfare. She also outlined a place-based prioritization. Cats within sensitive ecological zones are removed entirely. In rural and suburban areas they are managed through TNR, sanctuaries, rescues, adoptions, enclosures, and other means. In areas of intense human habitation and habitat modification, cats are not managed for biodiversity, even if they are for humane animal care.

Bob Salinger, Executive Director of the Audubon Society of Portland, presented a case study of cooperation between conservation and animal advocates. Portland Audubon works directly with the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon on a campaign to reduce free-roaming cats for reasons of both biodiversity and animal welfare. They focus on win-win opportunities such as reducing cat overpopulation, ending animal abandonments, moving TNR programs away from zones of high biodiversity, and advocating for responsible companion animal care. This has generated consternation in national environmental and animal welfare organizations who promote strident perspectives on the issue. But Portland Audubon and the Feral Cat Coalition have each other’s political back, graciously accept the reality of their primary concerns, and work to help each other programatically.

With all these reasons in mind, a smaller group of us gathered on the last day to talk about the lessons of the conference, and explore possible next steps. We all agreed that the deliberations and dialogue opened the way for win-win solutions to outdoor cats. It may be a wicked problem from a policy perspective, but we have ample ecological, social and ethical knowledge, coupled with examples from the field, to make good faith policy and management decisions. The organizers are now working to build out the next steps, and I look forward to helping them as I can.