Cat-killing bill may be stalled

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2007:
WASHINGTON D.C.–HR 767, a bill that if passed would allow
the National Wildlife Refuge system to authorize hunters to shoot
feral cats, unanimously cleared the U.S. House of Representatives on
an October 23, 2007 voice vote, and entered the Senate without
organized opposition.
Then, after page one exposure in the October 2007 edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, HR 767 ran into Lee “The LocoMotive” Zucker, owner
of The LocoMotive vegetarian restaurant in Eugene, Oregon. Zucker
called many of the national animal advocacy groups and regional
humane societies whose first word was that HR 767 could not be
stopped.

Assigned to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works on November 8, HR 767 had not emerged a week after
Thanksgiving. Alley Cat Allies president Becky Robinson was
guardedly optimistic that it would not be acted upon before the end
of the first session of the 110th Congress.
“My D.C. folks tell me its being held in the Senate
committee, not to be brought forward,” American Humane president
Marie Wheatley told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Friends of Animals on November 13 issued the first nationally
distributed electronic activist alert about HR 767, and began
calling Senators. “We’ve got a chance to stop this bill,” decided
FoA president Priscilla Feral. “Let’s do it.”
Titled the Refuge Ecology Protection, Assistance, and
Immediate Response Act, or REPAIR Act, HR 767 was introduced by
Representative Ron Kind, of LaCrosse, Wisconsin-where birder Mark
Smith in 2005 organized a campaign to seek state legislation to allow
hunters to shoot feral cats. Passed by the Wisconsin Conservation
Congress, the proposal died due to the threat of a gubernatorial
veto.
HR 767, potentially doing the same thing at the national
level, was pushed by the American Bird Conservancy, an organization
built on opposition to neuter/return feral cat control
HR 767 “sneaked under the radar because they did not use any of our
usual search words, like feral or even animal,” said Wheatley.
Instead, HR 767 mentions “harmful nonnative species” and “invasive
species.” A cursory look at HR 767 suggested to most readers that it
was a routine reauthorization of ongoing refuge conservation programs.
The devil was in the details–and may still be, as even if
the Senate does not act on HR 767, a similar measure could be
slipped through as a rider on any Interior Department appropriation
bill, the avenue that former Senator Conrad Burns of Montana used in
2004 to undo key provisions of the 1971 federal law that protected
wild horses from sale to slaughter.