There are few outdoor-related subjects that elicit more response and prompt more passionate emotions than the debate about free-roaming and feral cats and their impact on U.S. songbird—and game-bird—populations.

These days, when a reporter accurately writes that millions of birds are killed annually by outdoor cats, more often than not, cat supporters immediately rally to the defense of pet cats allowed to run freely as well as those abandoned or homeless cats that live outside year ‘round.

Until recently, few organizations or individuals dared to speak out strongly to condemn the well-meaning  but misdirected Trap, Neuter and Return programs implemented by some cities and municipalities that capture feral cats but turn them loose again after sterilization.

The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is one of the few conservation groups that fully grasps the irrationality of TNR programs and hasn’t been afraid to say it. The organization produces videos, fact sheets and has launched a Keep Your Cat Indoors campaign.

A 2010 peer-reviewed University of Nebraska-Lincoln report, "Feral Cats and Their Management," put the annual economic loss from feral cat predation on birds in the U.S. at $17 billion.

In his May 29 column, Worcester, Massachusets, "Telegram & Gazette" outdoors columnist Mark Blazis doesn’t pull any punches. While noting that cats are not native to America, Blazis calls for a national educational effort to significantly change long-ingrained habits of pet owners who assume their right of ownership to let their cats roam free.

“They need to know they are killing with their permissive kindness,” Blazis writes.

According to Blazis, the ABC and others, an estimated 80 million feral cats currently roam the U.S. outdoors. Studies show that Wisconsin alone annually loses 17-30 million songbirds to outdoors felines. Nationally, feral and domestic cats annually kill between 100-300 million songbirds, with some estimates placing that number closer to 1 billion.

In 2005, 57 percent of the 12,000-member Wisconsin Conservation Congress voted to support a proposal to allow hunters to kill feral cats to protect game birds and songbirds from predatory stray felines. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle said his office was inundated with letters and e-mails from angry cat lovers and that he’d never sign a bill allowing open season on free-roaming cats. The proposal was subsequently dropped.

You see, there’s no middle ground on the debate about cats in the outdoors.