That vast sea of grasses, so thick and high that pioneers said it could swallow a rider on horseback, all but disappeared as sodbusters ripped it away to make room for lush and productive cropland.

What was an obstacle to progress 150 years ago suddenly is getting a fresh, hard look as a major source of fuel. Our energy-starved nation is scrambling to come up with alternatives to limited supplies of expensive oil and natural gas, and there’s a growing buzz about switchgrass even though most Americans would need a botanical guide to identify it.

Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., the world’s largest producer of ethanol made from corn, this month unveiled plans to ramp up research into switchgrass as another source to make ethanol and other biofuels for cars, homes and industry. In Washington, the Democrats soon to take over as heads of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have put development of switchgrass as a fuel source high on their priority list.

This is a “natural evolution of an industry that could be massive,” said Patricia Woertz, chief executive of Decatur, Ill.-based ADM.

Also known as tall panic grass, switchgrass doesn’t look much like the grasses that cover today’s lawns. It is a lanky plant, with stems up to 8 or 9 ft. high and a root system just as deep, topped with lacy seed-bearing panicles. It grows in thick, jungle-like tangles.

It also is especially good at storing energy from the sun. “A living solar battery” is what Canadian switchgrass researcher Roger Samson calls it.

The U.S. Agriculture Department calls switchgrass “perhaps our most valuable native grass.” Oak Ridge National Laboratory has identified it as the model plant species for fuel, better than corn, which is all the rage now as the prime ingredient of ethanol. President Bush highlighted the energy potential of switch grass in his State of the Union address this year.

So, like a once-treasured toy rediscovered after years in the attic, switchgrass is now the focus of talk about its revival–this time as a cash crop–on tens of millions of acres in the Midwest, South and Great Plains.

“This could very well be the future,” said Stephen Gardner, one of dozens of southeastern Iowa farmers who for years have supplied switchgrass for an electric generating experiment in Chillicothe that has shown encouraging results.

The notion of converting vegetation into fuel may seem odd in a nation that runs on oil, gas and coal. But fossil fuels themselves are the detritus of ancient plants, buried in the earth for millions of years.

They are also a finite resource, while fuel crops can be grown again and again. “Nature figured out long ago how to store chemical energy in plants,” explained Robert Brown, director of the office of biorenewable programs at Iowa State University.

University of Illinois Research
Energy can be squeezed from most any plant, and there are a lot of them under study these days as potential fuel sources. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is leading the way in research on giant miscanthus, a grass native to Asia. It can grow to 13 ft. with bamboo-like stems ripe for burning.

The trick today is to target the plants that can be most efficiently grown and tapped for fuel. For now, the renewable fuel of choice in the U.S. is corn-based ethanol. It is essentially alcohol made from the starches in grain. Humans have been fermenting and drinking it since prehistoric times.

Corn is abundant, and it has a clout-heavy lobby of farmers and agribusiness promoting it for ethanol, which is largely blended with gasoline. But corn has limitations as a raw material for fuel. Divert a lot of corn to ethanol production and food prices are bound to rise. Corn also is a resource hog, requiring good soil and lots of water, fertilizer and herbicide, heightening environmental concerns.

One prominent researcher contends it takes more fossil energy to grow and transform cornstarch into ethanol than the new fuel can yield, suggesting the process is a waste. Other experts disagree, but if there is an energy benefit to making ethanol this way, it is not huge.

The hope for switchgrass is that it may bypass a lot of those problems while providing more bang for the energy buck in an ecologically friendly and low-maintenance way.

The explanation hearkens back to the prairies of old. Near-treeless vistas of undulating grass once stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up into Canada, providing a feasting ground for birds and other wildlife and packing the soils with nutrients. The grasses once covered 60 percent of what is now Illinois, which calls itself the Prairie State.

Ironically, the fertile soil of the prairie also was its undoing. The farmers who eventually chopped it away liked to boast that the prairie topsoil was so deep and rich that it could grease the axles of their wagons.

There were lots of different grasses in the Midwest prairie, but switchgrass was one of the three predominant varieties. It didn’t need much water, it adapted to a wide range of latitudes and soils, and it sucked in a lot of carbon dioxide from the air as fuel to grow on.

Prairie fires burned so hot that they would create their own cyclones, a testament to the energy that the grasses stored away.

Those are some of the traits that are kindling interest in switchgrass as the nation scrambles to grow its way into energy self-sufficiency. David Bransby, a grasslands expert at Auburn University in Alabama, suggests a few more.

And It Grows Prodigiously
Bransby, who has studied switchgrass for 20 years, says the plant grows prodigiously, yielding huge per-acre amounts of what the energy industry calls biomass–a term for living material that can be turned into fuel.

Switchgrass requires no herbicides and little fertilizer, it can take hold on poor-quality land not suitable for most crops, and it is a perennial, meaning it doesn’t have to be replanted like corn after each harvest. Stands of good-quality switchgrass can last 10 years or more.

Switchgrass also has ecological benefits, Bransby said. Its deep roots bind soil and block erosion. They also pump a lot of carbon into the ground, essentially recycling carbon-based greenhouse gases emitted when the plant is burned as fuel.

“If we really put our minds to it, we can use this to help replace the oil we import from the Middle East very easily in the next 20 years,” Bransby said.

Unlike with corn, a cost-effective process to convert switchgrass and other fibrous plant material into ethanol hasn’t been perfected, though researchers say they’re close. ADM’s Woertz said biofuel producers right now are in a “chicken and egg” situation as they explore the potential of switchgrass.

“How do you build massive facilities when you haven’t grown the stuff yet, and then how do you grow the stuff if you haven’t anywhere to process it?” she asked.

Some experts argue that switchgrass would be an even better option as an ingredient for fuels other than ethanol, and the technology to make them exists now.

Samson, who runs a non-profit agricultural research institute in Quebec, said switchgrass already is being used to make a low-quality natural gas substitute suitable for heating farm structures and small industrial buildings. Such biogas systems are in wide use in Germany and China, he said.

Switchgrass also can be easily chopped and pressed into fuel pellets for burning in special furnaces to heat homes, Samson said. The slow-burning pellets heat for a price far less than natural gas, quickly paying for the cost of new heating equipment, he said.

“We think we’re heading toward an agrarian industrial revolution,” Samson predicted.

In Iowa, Gardner and more than 100 other growers have supplied switchgrass for years to a federally sanctioned experiment that burns the grass alongside coal in a power plant in tiny Chillicothe, 80 miles southeast of Des Moines. Preliminary results indicate that switchgrass burns almost as hot as the coal, and its presence in the fuel mix reduces sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions.

The Iowa farmers reaped their switchgrass from stands they had planted as part of the federal conservation reserve program, which pays farmers to take erosion-prone, low-quality cropland out of production.

Around the country, there are 36 million acres enrolled in the program, an area that if stitched together would cover every square inch of Illinois. Some already is planted in switch grass to help with erosion control.

In the prairies of old, nature mixed in switchgrass with other plant varieties that kept each other in check. That wouldn’t be the case if it is reintroduced as a fuel crop across wide stretches of the nation, and the prospect is troubling to some experts in invasive species.

Writing recently in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by S. Raghu of the Illinois Natural History Survey warned that wholesale plantings of switchgrass, miscanthus or other grasses grown for fuel could have an ecological downside.

The grasses are attracting interest as biofuel crops because they grow rapidly, need little water and appear resistant to most pests and diseases. But those are also traits that help invasive species wreak havoc on ecosystems and agriculture.

The U.S. spends more than $100 billion annually trying to beat back the ravages of invasive species such as kudzu, so Raghu and his colleagues urged caution as the pressure to develop new crops for fuel intensifies.

Instead, they are subjected to two and three extra sessions of math and reading, and spend educational time learning how to take tests. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is leading a national coalition to reverse this trend and give every student and teacher the opportunity to “Learn Outside!”

Over the last year CBF has built a network of over 110 partners including the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Foundation, Audubon Society, Nation Education Association, WindStar Wildlife Institute and others.

Each coalition partner believes that every child needs to be educated about the environment in order to make sound personal decisions and to grow into a responsible citizen. The only way to guarantee this outcome is to amend the controversial No Child Left Behind law, which has unintentionally reduced the number of schools and students who can participate in valuable environmental education experiences like those created by CBF educators throughout the watershed.

The hard work of CBF and its NCLI coalition partners have led to level of success that some thought impossible. Two NCLI bills have been introduced in the House and Senate: HR 3036 was introduced in the House by MD representative John Sarbanes, and S 1981 was sponsored in the Senate by Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

An active campaign on key Congressional committees and across the nation has resulted in bi-partisan co-sponsor ship of each bill, and environmental education was included in Chairman Miller’s draft version of NCLB – the only new program to be included.

We are winning, but the road ahead is long. We need your continued action and support as we attempt to persuade more members of Congress to co-sponsor the NCLI Acts, and as we look toward debate on the floor of the House and Senate.

If you want to learn more about our efforts or what you can do to make sure that every student learns to treasure the environment, visit www.cbf.org/eenclb.

When I turned 12, my father took me hunting for the first time. We had a bird dog, and on Saturday mornings we roamed nearby fields in search of ring-necked pheasants and cottontails. I learned gun safety and hunting strategy in pursuit of small game. October was the highlight of our hunting season.

Though hunting is on the decline, millions of hunters across the country still pursue pheasants, cottontails, squirrels and other small game species. The obvious question to a casual observer is, “how can these small animals sustain such relentless hunting pressure?”

The answer is “reproductive potential.” That’s the term biologists use to describe the high reproductive rate of these species.

Cottontails, for example, begin breeding in February unless winter’s grip in unusually firm. As birthing time approaches, the female digs a shallow hole in the ground. The female lines the nest with fur she plucks from her belly and covers the opening with grass, making it difficult to see from above. Nests usually are placed in stands of dense grasses, but sometimes cottontails even sink their nests into well-manicured lawns.

After a 30-day pregnancy, females give birth to four or five blind, naked young. Females nurse their brood only at dawn and dusk. They spend the rest of the day feeding or resting. After about a week in the nest, the young are fully furred, and their eyes and ears open. They leave the nest after 14 days. By the age of one month the young are weaned and independent.

Meanwhile, mom has been busy. She mates shortly after giving birth, so she’s pregnant with a second brood while nursing the first. A single female might breed four or five times in a year and produce up to 35 babies. The combination of large litter size, multiple broods, and rapid growth makes cottontails prolific breeders. That’s how they can sustain heavy losses to predators and hunters.

In fact, wildlife biologists treat hunters as just another predator when determining annual season lengths and harvest limits.

Squirrels (Red, Gray and Fox) produce litters of four or five pups twice a year while conditions are good, but forgo the summer litter when nut supplies are low. But by making more babies when food is abundant, squirrel populations are resilient and relatively stable.

That’s why each fall state wildlife agencies issue mast reports that estimate the anticipated production of nuts and berries. Biologists and hunters use these projections to determine when and where to hunt squirrels. And then there are the Ring-necked Pheasants I hunted as a kid in southeastern Pennsylvania. Today, they’re essentially gone.

Habitat loss due to clean farming techniques and pheasants’ inability to survive severe winters have decimated ring-neck populations from Michigan to Pennsylvania. Back-to-back killer winters in 1977 and 1978 devastated ring-neck numbers, and in 1993 the big March blizzard delivered another death blow.

Though there are pockets of breeding pheasants here and there, and many states still have token pheasant seasons, self-sustaining populations are few here in the east.

Pennsylvania propagates ring-necks on game farms. This fall the plan is to release 100,000 birds at a cost of more than $2.7 million for fiscal year 2006-2007, according to Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser. This includes the cost of operating four farms, personnel and fixed assets.

Though most wildlife biologists take a dim view of an expensive stocking program that yields few birds capable of surviving the winter and ultimately nesting, the Pennsylvania Game Commission serves the people that pay the bills. It explains propagating pheasants on its Web site thusly: “We raise pheasants because people like to hunt them.”

Though I gave up small game hunting more than 30 years ago, I still enjoy the cackle of a cock bird and the zig-zag escape of a speedy cottontail.

They bring back fond memories of a boy, his dad, and a favorite dog. –Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Of all the lamentations about the “good old days,” perhaps none is as regrettable as the sea change that has occurred in terms of where our children play. No longer are the sandlots, community creeks, or the tracts of woods abutting neighborhoods the places where kids wear familiar dirt paths to secret hideouts or tree forts where only the ever-changing password could get you in.

Many of our watery playgrounds have found a similar fate. Some of my most cherished childhood memories are of walking in my father’s wake, wading amid the tidal underwater grasses. Our prey: softshell crabs. For my dad, it was the thrill of the hunt, and of course, the delectable bounty at day’s end.

But for me, it was enough to be down by the river, sloshing around, delighting in a young boy’s first adventures as hunter-gatherer. Like so much else, much of those underwater grasses have since disappeared, overtaken by the murky sediment and algae that are choking the James River and the rest of Virginia’s waters.

When our mothers told us to “go outside and play,” we had plenty to choose from–and, typically, whatever we decided to do, there were any number of kids outside to do it with. Not so today. We are raising a generation of young people whose childhoods literally have been tethered to electrical outlets. Video and computer games. TiVo and YouTube. Getting together after school is more likely to be online–via MySpace or Facebook–than a place where there are trees or bugs or sunshine.

This self-imposed house arrest of our children has reached an epidemic level, and it is not without its consequences. A growing body of research is underscoring the fact that this “nature deficit-disorder”–a term coined by author Richard Louv in his seminal work, Last Child in the Woods, to describe our kids’ lack of connectedness to their natural environs–is contributing to a wide range of destructive childhood issues, including depression, attention disorders, and obesity.

Childhood obesity is but one telling byproduct of a sequestered generation. Is it any coincidence that some 25 million American children and teens are overweight–twice the number who were considered too heavy just 20 years ago?

Numbers like those have propelled a special subcommittee in the Virginia General Assembly to study the issue and make recommendations. While there has been considerable attention focused on what kids are eating in school, not enough emphasis has been placed on getting our kids outside and into nature.

Outdoor experiences also are a critical element in developing the personal connections and appreciation for nature needed to protect natural resources. As a growing population continues to place greater demands and pressure on the environment, we must also strengthen our resolve to safeguard the health of the environment.

Environmental education programs, nature centers, parks, and natural areas within our communities provide crucial opportunities today to ignite a sense of wonder in our children about the natural world.

Connecting our children to the outdoors has other compelling benefits. Schools that hold classes outside and use other forms of experiential education improve student test scores in social studies, science, language arts, and math.

One outdoor science program in California saw test scores jump 27 percent. Other studies show similar gains in improving student self-esteem, problem-solving, and motivation to learn. Research at the University of Illinois found that when students as young as five spent time in natural settings their symptoms of attention-deficit disorder were markedly reduced.

Results such as these have begun to accelerate a children-and-nature movement throughout the country. Here in Richmond, VA, parents and policymakers alike had the chance to hear first-hand how to go about reconnecting our kids to the natural world around them. Louv participated in a public forum in early November. His insights provide practical solutions for unplugging our children from videos and, like generations before them, plugging them into nature.

For the health of our environment and the health of our children, we need to make this a priority.–Times-Dispatch

“The ability to recognize and favor kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants,” said Dr. Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton.”When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbors get them,” Dudley explains.

Biologist Susan Dudley is the first to discover that plants recognize their kin. “It appears, though, that they only do this when sharing a pot with unrelated plants; when they share a pot with family they don’t increase their root growth,” the biologist says.

Because differences between groups of strangers and groups of siblings only occurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition. Though they lack cognition and memory, Dudley says the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviors such as altruism towards relatives.

Like humans, says Dudley, the most interesting plant behaviors occur beneath the surface.

Dudley and her student, Amanda File, observed the behavior in sea rocket, Cakile edentula, a member of the mustard family native to beaches throughout North America, including the Great Lakes, where McMaster is located near Lake Ontario.

Sea Rocket
The American sea rocket grows on sandy beaches above the high tide line. The two biologists grew batches of sea rocket in pots of four, either with specimens from the same maternal family or from several different families.Those growing with strangers had a greater mass of roots after two months of growing than those sharing pots with siblings.

Gardeners might want to use this discovery to change their plant arrangements, placing siblings close to one another.

“Gardeners have known for a long time that some pairs of species get along better than others, and scientists are starting to catch up with why that happens,” says Dudley. “What I’ve found is that plants from the same mother may be more compatible with each other than with plants of the same species that had different mothers.

“The more we know about plants, the more complex their interactions seem to be, so it may be as hard to predict the outcome as when you mix different people at a party,” she joked.

How the plants learn which neighbor is a relative is still a mystery. Dudley speculates that a protein or chemical signal specific to each plant’s family might be secreted and detected by other roots nearby.

The study was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. It appeared recently in the Royal Society journal “Biology Letters.”--ENS

When planted with wildlife in mind, the right trees aid in the propagation and survival of both game and nongame species.  That’s important where only remnants of forests remain.

In most of the country, it’s important to try and plant trees only in months whose names have an R in them. Trees can be planted in May and June, but they require more maintenance and are not as likely to survive.

When deciding which type of tree to plant solely to benefit wildlife, it helps to remember that wildlife trees fall into two broad categories: Food and cover. The ideal tree provides both.

Few trees provide both food and cover for wildlife, but a couple come close. Eighteen-inch DBH (diameter at breast height) or bigger blackgums are a good example of a dual role tree. 

Older blackgums often produce lots of berries. They also often  have large holes on their main stems. These large holes serve as dens for everything from birds to opossums.

Another dual role tree is the Washington hawthorne. Mature hawthornes are loaded with berries that are sought by birds, squirrels and other woodland creatures.  They also make great nesting trees since they are covered with long, pointy thorns.

But not all trees provide both food and optimal cover. Some are good for one or the other, but not both. Any large tree with a hole in it is considered a den tree. They are valuable for obvious reasons to all sorts of small creatures.

One of the arguments for not aggressively logging any woods is that the best den trees are typically the oldest trees. Old trees are naturally bigger and therefore valuable to timber companies. Anyone interested in logging their woods with wildlife still in mind, should identify the big den trees and leave them standing.

Not all logging is bad for wildlife, however. Thinning some old trees creates new growth at a level that small animals can access.  Leftover treetops also create spectacular cover for ground nesting birds and other woodland wildlife.

Large fallen tree trunks should also be left on the forest floor.  As they decay, they often hollow and create prime escape and hiding spots.

Some pines produce edible nuts, but their main function on behalf of wildlife is as cover. Planted in blocks, evergreens are unsurpassed as winter windbreaks. 

Pines, however, need to be protected from deer until they are 15-ft-tall. Their pungent and sticky sap is attractive to rutting bucks that use them to mark their territory. Aggressively rubbed pines rarely survive.

There are a variety food trees that do well in many states. Like the blackgum and the Washington hawthorne, all produce a mast crop.  Mast is the fruit of a tree or a shrub and is called either “hard” (acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts, etc.) or “soft” (fleshy fruits of dogwood, black gum, black cherry, etc.).

Persimmon trees produce a large fruit that is sought by all wildlife, especially deer and turkeys. They can be difficult to transplant, however.

A better mast tree choice is one of several varieties of apple trees. Late-bearing varieties like the Granny Smith are good for hunters who would like fruit to still be dropping when deer season rolls around.

And though they are easy to buy and transplant, apple trees require ongoing maintenance. The best producing trees are pruned annually, sprayed several times a year and are individually protected from deer and rabbits.

A better choice for year-round mast production is a combination of oak trees. Because of their different fruiting habits, landowners should plant both red and white oaks.

Acorns on trees in the red oak group mature in two years, while trees in the white oak group produce mature acorns in one season. Having both groups in one woodlot lessens the chance of a complete mast crop failure. Failures occur most often when there is a late killing frost in the spring.

Common species in the white oak group include white oak, post oak and chestnut oak. Common red oaks include northern red oak, southern red oak and black oak.

Anyone who loves the outdoors has an obligation to put something back into the wilderness they use. Planting trees is a fun and easy way to ensure the countryside remains scenic and wildlife has a place to live and eat.

Jayne Amico, who runs the clinic, told the woman that in the future, she wAdd Newouldn’t be able to care for any more injured songbirds if Kloth continued to let her cats roam outdoors. Cats should be kept indoors or in an enclosure so they won’t harm native wildlife, Amico told her.

Kloth was incensed. “Just like you need fresh air, my dogs need fresh air, my cats need fresh air,” she said. Moreover, Kloth said, she doesn’t want to clean litter boxes.

It was yet another clash between those who love cats and believe they should be allowed to roam unrestrained and those who believe outdoor cats kill too many songbirds and should be kept indoors.

Amico describes herself as an avid cat lover who became appalled at the wildlife her cats killed when she let them loose in the backyard. She now keeps them indoors or in an outdoor enclosure.

“The effect cat predation has on songbird populations is enormous,” Amico said, “and we as responsible cat owners can completely eliminate this problem with our cats by keeping them indoors.” Even without cat predation, songbird populations already are under pressure from loss of habitat, exposure to chemicals and collisions with buildings and windows, she said.

Cat lovers and bird lovers do not have to be at odds, of course, and some people count themselves in both groups. Many bird watchers own cats and keep them indoors, and some cat lovers keep their cats indoors or in enclosures to protect the birds or their cats or both.

But often the issue of cats’ preying on small birds is an emotional one that sharply divides the birders from the cat lovers. Only last month, James M. Stevenson, a birder who founded the Galveston Ornithological Society in Texas, was prosecuted on animal-cruelty charges for shooting a cat that he said was stalking Piping Plovers, an endangered shorebird species. The case ended in a mistrial.

Conflicting Rights
Many cat lovers like Kloth think their cats have a right to be outdoors unfettered.

“Hello. This is my backyard,” she said.

What there is little disagreement over is that cats do kill songbirds, in big numbers. The cardinal Kloth brought to Amico died; the dove, badly injured, is still alive. Last year, Amico took in 31 birds seriously injured by cats, including a female Wood Thrush that laid an egg three days in a row “while dreadfully wounded.”

One study by biologists and ecologists in Wisconsin estimated that “hundreds of millions” of birds are killed yearly in the U.S. just by rural roaming cats, 39 million birds in Wisconsin alone.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Environmental Protection are among numerous agencies that advise cat owners to keep their pets indoors for the protection of both the pet and wildlife such as birds.

“We get people concerned about coyotes’ attacking their cats. We’re constantly saying, ‘Well, your cat doesn’t belong outside,’” said Laurie Fortin, a wildlife biologist with the state environmental agency. “People don’t like to hear it, but that is the bottom line. It is much better for the cat, and the wildlife.”

Songbirds At Risk
Fortin said agency statistics show that of 5,032 songbirds brought to animal rehab clinics in Connecticut last year, about a quarter of them, 1,333, involved cat attacks. In all likelihood, that figure is but a fraction of the actual number of cat attacks because most incidents of cats’ injuring or killing birds are never reported.

In a situation analogous to the one in Texas, cats in Milford, CN are thought to have been a factor in deaths of Piping Plover chicks on town beaches in recent decades. Piping Plovers build their nests on beaches, and their eggs and young are highly vulnerable to trampling or predation by pets such as cats and dogs.

“Your best bet is to keep it inside as an indoor cat, but especially in inappropriate areas” such as wildlife preserves, said Patrick Comins, director of bird conservation for Audubon Connecticut.

The Connecticut Humane Society, which places more than 5,000 cats each year, strongly recommends that people who adopt its cats keep them indoors. “When we educate our adopters, we talk about the real need for them to have their cats be indoor cats,” said Alicia Wright, public relations director for the society.

An indoor cat can be a happy cat if the owner remembers that cats need exercise, she said. “Part of having an indoor cat is interacting with the cat, playing with them, providing them with a lot of fun and stimulation.”

The common house cat in the U.S. is not a native species, unlike, say, the Bobcat. House cats are descended from a wild European and African species, domesticated long ago.

“Our wildlife has not evolved to cope with cat predation,” Amico said, a point echoed by wildlife biologists. By that logic, Kloth said, she shouldn’t be here either. “I’m not natural to the United States. My ancestors were brought over here. The only people natural here are the American Indians.”

Still, many thousands of pet cats are allowed to roam, Kloth’s among them. She said it would be too hard to try to keep her cats indoors while putting leashes on three dogs and opening the door. The cats would just get out anyway.

Besides household cats, there are colonies of feral cats throughout the U.S. that also contribute to bird predation. In some cases, local groups have adopted these feral colonies in which feral cats are trapped, neutered, vaccinated and returned to the outdoors. –Hartford Courant