Project seeks to count all the cats in D.C.

A new effort in Washington, D.C. has an ambitious goal: count all the cats in the city. That includes feral cats, which roam the streets and prey on wildlife, as well as pets. “We tend to forget that they don’t actually belong in our yards and parks,” Clare Nielsen, a spokeswoman for the American Bird Conservancy, told the New York Times. “They are not part of our native wildlife, and they kill more birds than any other direct human-caused threat — more than 2 billion each year in the U.S.” The $1.5 million project will include 60 camera traps, infrared sensors and a smartphone app. A conservation biologist who studies cat populations will analyze the data.

Read the full New York Times story here.