A new study can be summed up in three words: Not at all.
Five researchers at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences department look at all the literature and conclude:
TNR does not appear to decrease population size unless significant resources and efforts are made to remove animals via adoption. The animals that remain appear to live shorter lives and are subject to disease and injury. In our opinion, it is much more humane to capture a healthy cat, and, if cannot be adopted, have it euthanized instead of returning it to the outdoors, where it will suffer during its life.
The danger we see in TNR programs is that TNR may be seen as a viable solution to reducing feral cat populations, and that therefore less money and effort will go towards prevention of free-ranging cats. The practice of TNR and the establishment of TNR colonies is neither humane nor proven to be effective at reducing feral cat populations. Our review concurs with another published review that found that TNR colonies do not decrease without high adoption/removal rates, and that these colonies are both a danger to the cats themselves and to nearby humans and wildlife (Longcore et al. 2009).
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