Please take a few minutes today to contact your member of the Virginia House of Delegates and Delegate Michael Webert ([email protected]), the Chair of the House Agriculture Subcommittee, urging them to STOP action on H.B. 1527, a bill that would exempt people who release unowned neutered cats to the environment from laws prohibiting the abandonment of cats.
Votes to Occur January 18
The bill probably will be considered by the House Agriculture Subcommittee on January 18, this Wednesday, so take action now. Express your opposition now.
It is especially important at this stage to contact the subcommittee members if you are a constituent. They include Delegate Webert, Delegates Wendy Gooditis ([email protected]), Daniel Helmer ([email protected]) and Robert Orrock ([email protected]). If you don’t know your local delegate, enter your address in the Who's My Legislator site.
Tell them to vote against the bill, introduced by Delegate Kelly Convirs-Fowler ([email protected]).
Points You Can Make
The bill was drafted without the input of any of the members of the state-mandated Free-Roaming Cat Stakeholder Working Group, which just completed 18 months of work to find solutions to the harm that the estimated 1.2 million unowned cats in Virginia cause to birds and small animals and the public health risks they create.
H.B. 1527 addresses only one aspect of a complex problem. It fails to take into account the issues that the Working Group has spent months addressing, including:
the need for multiple strategies to reduce the population of free-roaming cats,
the importance of not releasing trapped cats back to the environment without the consent of the affected property owner,
the need for standards and training for people who feed unowned cats to reduce the risks to wildlife,
the importance of public education campaigns to address the abandonment of cats, and
the need for research on the best ways to address the free-roaming cat problem.
You can read the report of the Working Group majority, which includes ASNV’s Tom Blackburn, here. Addressing only one issue, as HB1527 would do, undermines the 18 months of effort by the Working Group and runs counter to the mandate from the 2022 General Assembly to the Working Group: to develop recommendations and solutions that reduce and control the population of free-roaming cats and mitigate their impact on native wildlife, natural resources and public health.
Thank you for your consideration.
-Audubon Society of Northern Virginia
