Long enough for ecosystems to change, adapt and form as well as for animals to evolve based on their new environment. Considering that there are already rats & cockroaches adapting to pesticides, both birds & pests are most certainly adapting to cats to some degree after the passage of thousands of years.
Obviously there may be a point in restricting cats in more insular habitats such as small islands, but for anybody on a major continent it is rather pointless. Furthermore, cats serve an important purpose in hunting pests that spread alongside humans, primarily rats and mice, both of which can have an even more disastrous effect on local ecosystems.
This isnt an extinction event caused by a slow climatic change or something, in some places on earth its an invasive species and if you look up how fast/slow they cause damage than its in the range of tens to hundreds, not thousands of years.
Do you think 2,000 years is a long time? About how long do you think extinction events usually take?
Long enough for ecosystems to change, adapt and form as well as for animals to evolve based on their new environment. Considering that there are already rats & cockroaches adapting to pesticides, both birds & pests are most certainly adapting to cats to some degree after the passage of thousands of years.
Obviously there may be a point in restricting cats in more insular habitats such as small islands, but for anybody on a major continent it is rather pointless. Furthermore, cats serve an important purpose in hunting pests that spread alongside humans, primarily rats and mice, both of which can have an even more disastrous effect on local ecosystems.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aam8327
This isnt an extinction event caused by a slow climatic change or something, in some places on earth its an invasive species and if you look up how fast/slow they cause damage than its in the range of tens to hundreds, not thousands of years.