Simulating Free-Roaming Cat Population Management Options in Open Demographic Environments

Correction: Simulating Free-Roaming Cat Population Management Options in Open Demographic Environments

Large populations of free-roaming cats (FRCs) generate ongoing concerns for welfare of both individual animals and populations, for human public health, for viability of native wildlife populations, and for local ecological damage. Managing FRC populations is a complex task, without universal agreement on best practices. Previous analyses that use simulation modeling tools to evaluate alternati...

Simulating testing environments with configuration options

A program is said to be configurable if it is implemented to accept parameters in order to function differently depending on the values of parameters. Such a parameter is called a configuration option, and an instance of all parameters together determine a configuration for the program. The test results data of a configurable software tends to be large. Consequently, making sense out of this da...

Tourists’ Perceptions of the Free-Roaming Dog Population in Samoa

A study was undertaken to establish how visiting tourists to Samoa perceived free-roaming dogs (Canis familiaris) and their management, additionally some factors that influence their perceptions were assessed. Questionnaires were administered to 281 tourists across Samoa over 5 weeks. Free-roaming dogs were seen by 98.2% (n = 269/274) of respondents, with 64.9% (n = 137/211) reporting that thei...

A Generalized Population Monitoring Program to Inform the Management of Free-Roaming Cats

Management of freeroaming cats was once a matter of interest primarily to animal control departments, public health officials, wildlife biologists, and a small but dedicated corps of cat colony caretakers. Over the last two decades, however, advocates for feral cats have become increasingly well organized, their ranks have grown substantially, and they have developed “TNR” (trap-neuter-return) ...

Humane cat population management guidance