Australia plans to kill millions of feral cats

The Australian government is airdropping poisonous sausages across thousands of hectares of land in an effort to kill millions of feral cats, according to reports.

It is just one of the tactics used by the government as part its plan to kill two million feral cats by 2020 in order to protect native species.

Cats are also trapped and shot by government officials.

https://news.yahoo.com/australia-plans-kill-millions-feral-144518346.html?ncid=facebook_yahoonewsf_akfmevaatca

Hmmm. Now that seems a horrible thing to do if you ask me. Are they causing a massive problem?

eddie wrote:Hmmm. Now that seems a horrible thing to do if you ask me. Are they causing a massive problem?

Yup. Same here. Feral cats kill millions of songbirds a year.

They are an invasive species that make good pets, but not wild animals.

Since they were first introduced by European settlers, feral cats have helped drive an estimated 20 mammal species to extinction, Gregory Andrews, the national commissioner of threatened species told the Sydney Morning Herald.

According to Mr Andrews, that makes feral cats the “single biggest threat” to Australia's native species.

The idea of killing animals with food is just horrible. Just horrible.
And probably a terrible death too.

eddie wrote:The idea of killing animals with food is just horrible. Just horrible.
And probably a terrible death too.

I hate that too. I wish there was a way they could put something into the food that rendered the cats sterile rather than killing them.

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

eddie wrote:The idea of killing animals with food is just horrible. Just horrible.
And probably a terrible death too.

I hate that too. I wish there was a way they could put something into the food that rendered the cats sterile rather than killing them.

That is a really good idea.

The common house cat, as a species, is the most prolific killer of all carnivores.  Much as I love my Bou and Cash, if a feral population were to get out of control it could be devastating.

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

eddie wrote:The idea of killing animals with food is just horrible. Just horrible.
And probably a terrible death too.

I hate that too. I wish there was a way they could put something into the food that rendered the cats sterile rather than killing them.

Im sure they could. Assuming they constantly dropped birth control on them. Here we we use trap, neuter, release, but it's not really working in urban areas without a lot of coyotes which love snacking on cats.

Poison them so they die in agony? I saw a neighbours Cat that had been poisoned. It was screaming and thrashing about with foam and sick coming out of it's mouth, The scum who suggested this should have it pushed down his/her throat. If they have to be culled, use Marksmen, a quick death by Bullet is the kindest thing to do !

There must be a better way. Perhaps it should be law that only registered breeders can have entire cats and dogs and all cats and dogs kept as housepets should be sterilized.
As for the feral animals feed them and put contraceptives in their food, catch, sterilize and release.
They may be a problem to wildlife but when it comes down to it people have made the problem, as usual, so people need to put themselves out to solve it and spend the money to do so without inflicting suffering on the cats.

+1

Killer cats

The answer is simple: Cats, especially feral ones, are killers.

The first cat is thought to have arrived in Australia at some point in the 17th century. Since then, their number has ballooned, with the population today estimated to cover 99.8% of the country.

Although feral cats belong to the same species as domestic cats, feral cats live in the wild where they are forced to hunt for survival.

Since they were first introduced by European settlers, feral cats have helped drive an estimated 20 mammal species to extinction, Gregory Andrews, national commissioner of threatened species told the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Andrews, that makes feral cats the single biggest threat to Australia's native species.

And that's significant in Australia, an island nation that was cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. Today, an estimated 80% of Australia's mammals and 45% of its birds are found in the wild nowhere else on earth.

For cats, native species are easy prey. Cats are believed to kill more than 1 million native birds, and 1.7 million reptiles across Australia everyday, a spokesperson for Australia's Department of the Environment and Energy told CNN, citing scientific research.

Some of the other species under threat from cats include the brush-tailed rabbit-rat, which the government classifies as vulnerable, and the rat-like golden bandicoot.
"We are not culling cats for the sake of it, we are not doing so because we hate cats," said Andrews.

"We have got to make choices to save animals that we love, and who define us as a nation."


https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/feral-cats-australia-intl/index.html

All well and good wanting to less harmfull methods, but clearly the problem is out of hand. Thus the method chosen is most cost effective and more time efficient to deal with this problem

As again these are wild cats and what would it cost to capture up to 6 million of them in the wild. To the view to sterilize many of them. Its simple not practical

The best way is to take out as many as possible, as soon as possible

But NOT by Poison !

phildidge wrote:Killer cats

The answer is simple: Cats, especially feral ones, are killers.

The first cat is thought to have arrived in Australia at some point in the 17th century. Since then, their number has ballooned, with the population today estimated to cover 99.8% of the country.

Although feral cats belong to the same species as domestic cats, feral cats live in the wild where they are forced to hunt for survival.

Since they were first introduced by European settlers, feral cats have helped drive an estimated 20 mammal species to extinction, Gregory Andrews, national commissioner of threatened species told the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Andrews, that makes feral cats the single biggest threat to Australia's native species.

And that's significant in Australia, an island nation that was cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. Today, an estimated 80% of Australia's mammals and 45% of its birds are found in the wild nowhere else on earth.

For cats, native species are easy prey. Cats are believed to kill more than 1 million native birds, and 1.7 million reptiles across Australia everyday, a spokesperson for Australia's Department of the Environment and Energy told CNN, citing scientific research.

Some of the other species under threat from cats include the brush-tailed rabbit-rat, which the government classifies as vulnerable, and the rat-like golden bandicoot.
"We are not culling cats for the sake of it, we are not doing so because we hate cats," said Andrews.

"We have got to make choices to save animals that we love, and who define us as a nation."


https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/feral-cats-australia-intl/index.html

All well and good wanting to less harmfull methods, but clearly the problem is out of hand. Thus the method chosen is most cost effective and more time efficient to deal with this problem

As again these are wild cats and what would it cost to capture up to 6 million of them in the wild. To the view to sterilize many of them. Its simple not practical

The best way is to take out as many as possible, as soon as possible

The problem with cats is, that even if you feed them they will still hunt for fun. They will kill a bird just because it's what they do, not because they are hungry.

nicko wrote:But NOT by Poison !

I'm not sure how they will insure that only the feral cats eat this poison food? We have the same problem with feral Hogs to. Texas almost started poisoning them, but too many folks were worried about what other animals might eat the poison. So we are back to shooting them by any and all means necessary.

Maddog wrote:

phildidge wrote:Killer cats

The answer is simple: Cats, especially feral ones, are killers.

The first cat is thought to have arrived in Australia at some point in the 17th century. Since then, their number has ballooned, with the population today estimated to cover 99.8% of the country.

Although feral cats belong to the same species as domestic cats, feral cats live in the wild where they are forced to hunt for survival.

Since they were first introduced by European settlers, feral cats have helped drive an estimated 20 mammal species to extinction, Gregory Andrews, national commissioner of threatened species told the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Andrews, that makes feral cats the single biggest threat to Australia's native species.

And that's significant in Australia, an island nation that was cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. Today, an estimated 80% of Australia's mammals and 45% of its birds are found in the wild nowhere else on earth.

For cats, native species are easy prey. Cats are believed to kill more than 1 million native birds, and 1.7 million reptiles across Australia everyday, a spokesperson for Australia's Department of the Environment and Energy told CNN, citing scientific research.

Some of the other species under threat from cats include the brush-tailed rabbit-rat, which the government classifies as vulnerable, and the rat-like golden bandicoot.
"We are not culling cats for the sake of it, we are not doing so because we hate cats," said Andrews.

"We have got to make choices to save animals that we love, and who define us as a nation."


https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/feral-cats-australia-intl/index.html

All well and good wanting to less harmfull methods, but clearly the problem is out of hand. Thus the method chosen is most cost effective and more time efficient to deal with this problem

As again these are wild cats and what would it cost to capture up to 6 million of them in the wild. To the view to sterilize many of them. Its simple not practical

The best way is to take out as many as possible, as soon as possible

The problem with cats is, that even if you feed them they will still hunt for fun. They will kill a bird just because it's what they do, not because they are hungry.

I agree they kill for fun and its why New Zealand is looking to stop all Domestic as well as feral cats. Its on the same link above

As usual everything else suffers for human mistakes, got a problem with another living creature - no problem - kill it, is the answer to everything.

Vintage wrote:As usual everything else suffers for human mistakes, got a problem with another living creature - no problem - kill it, is the answer to everything.

Yeah, but in this case it was the mistake of humans in the past Vintage

Other animals are suffering because of the feral cats

Either you do nothing and other species die out or you tackle this problem now and head on

It has to be tackled, so use the human resources, god knows there's plenty of them and put hands in pockets to fund it, its humans caused the problem by being the usual unthinking creatures we are, until something comes back to bite us, in this case indirectly so humans must come up with an humane solution. We've caused problems for other species by another species, usually its us directly.

Food that is put down poisoned will be eaten by other animals , poison is not selective ! Any fool can see that.

nicko wrote:Food that is put down poisoned will be eaten by other animals , poison is not selective  !    Any fool can see that.

+1 In fact, some malevolent neighbors will put out poisoned food for domestic animals.

               

That Yahoo! story is grossly sensationalised and over-simplified,  apparently written by some young novice reporter who seems to know little about cats, and zero about the situation down here...

Yes, the feral cats are one of the worst of the introduced species causing strife down here --  up there with wild pigs and goats..


But no, they don't cover "99.8%" of the continent --  Australia's mainland is 76% 'arid and semi-arid' land, and cats don't live in deserts (they would run out of food and water pretty fast if they did !).

The number of native mammals and birds that they supposedly kill each day is suspect as well --  a lot of the figures often quoted don't come from individual studies for each region, but were simply extrapolated from one research study in Tasmania back in the 1980s..


Even if there are 5 to 6 million feral cats in Oz, this current eradication programme is aimed at 'culling' 2 million from those areas where they are having the worst impact  --  it is not a total removal target, but rather reducing the numbers to give the wildlife a better chance at survival.

1080 poison has been used for decades in bait drops to control wild dogs, pigs, goats, rabbits, rats..   It is well known and recognised that poisoned baits aren't selective and will cause 'collateral' casualties as well --  meat-based baits will also be eaten by dingoes, birds, carnivorous marsupials, rodents, goannas, lizards, snakes, etc., while plant-based baits can be taken by 'roos, wallabies, cattle, sheep, horses, and scavenging birds  --  so that the agencies involved have to be careful where and when they drop baits, weighing up the costs: benefits for each case.


As for the area being baited --  a few thousand hectares = several thousand acres..

An acre is an area roughly 210 feet by 210 feet;
In metric it works out to just over 4000 sq. metres,
A hectare is 10,000 sq. metres == a 100 x 100 metre square;
One hectare =  2.47105 acres,
One square kilometre = 100 hectares  (i.e. 247.1 acres),
One square mile = 640 acres.

So, dropping baits over a few thousand hectares equates to covering several square miles in this stage of this programme --  only a "drop in the bucket" compared to the overall size of this continent (slightly smaller than the USA, Texas will comfortably fit in NSW, Alaska is smaller than Queensland, and the British Isles are dwarfed by the state of Victoria..).

And in the worst case scenario, there would be somewhere between a few dozen and a couple of hundred cats per hectare, with them being the 'apex predator', so at the most one baiting programme will only be culling a few thousands out of that "two million" target..

+1

Why not just put a bounty in them?

10 bucks a cat. Austraila had plenty of cash to buy back scary guns. Let people.make a little cash and control the population at the same time?

Hell, if you do it right, you could export them to China as food. Can't do that if you poison them.

There's a call to keep pet cats indoors at all times- from farmers and country folk who are annoyed by Chris Packham's call to stop killing 'pest' birds (Wild Justice), claiming cats kill far more birds than they do. One person also claimed cats including feral ones are the cause of the collapse of Scottish wild cats
population, no one saw fit to mention how the land is used and kept primarily for certain species, from which they make a handsome profit and doesn't always suit other wild species.
On the spring watch programme this morning its apparently badgers (again) that are causing the decline in hedgehogs both species eat more or less the same thing and a shortage of food or place to wander to find food can cause problems for hedgehogs, maybe even that they are eaten by badgers, one person did mention current farming methods don't help the wildlife as a whole. Biologists cite farming is to blame, farmers just blame the badgers.

They say Badgers give TB to Cattle, could it be Cattle give TB to Badgers ? Just wondering !

Maddog wrote:Hell, if you do it right, you could export them to China as food. Can't do that if you poison them.  

Provided they are already and sent over frozen. I wouldn't send a live gnat to China.

The Chinese skin Cats and Dogs alive before eating them !They are the Worlds worst violaters of animals .