Feral cats are the current Country Women’s Association (CWA) of NSW pest project and we would like to draw attention to the damage they do to our native wildlife.
Cats hunting in the wild are a huge threat to our native animals. In Australia cat number estimates vary from two million to six million, depending on the climate and food sources eg mouse plagues, ideal conditions.
In the 2014 Action Plan for Australian Mammals, published by CSIRO, author Andrew Burbridge, cats were identified as the biggest threat to our mammals.
Cats are double the threat of foxes and substantially more than mammal habitat loss.
Thirty-four mammals are now extinct and cats have directly contributed to 20 of these extinctions, and are implicated in another eight.
Though cats’ impacts are largely through predation, they also spread disease.
As reported in the March 17, 2021 Smithsonian Magazine, an Australian federal government report confirmed that feral cats are the primary driver of mammal extinction.
In June 2020 hearings were held and more than 200 submissions were presented from conservation organisations, animal welfare groups and scientists.
The final report found that each cat every year killed approximately 390 mammals, 225 reptiles and 130 birds.
That is 1.4 billion native Australian animals every year. The parliamentary report also found that 3.8 million pet cats are responsible for up to 390 million native animal deaths each year.
Domestic cats, for their own protection from feral cats and disease, as well as their contribution to the hunting of mammals and other native animals should, as a minimum be curfewed at night.
It is a huge task to eliminate feral cats but we can collectively reduce the native wildlife impact of cats generally by desexing our domestic cats and housing them at night. Please do not dump unwanted cats and kittens in the bush and neither are they welcome at farms.
Heather Martin
Tambar Springs Branch CWA of NSW secretary
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