Cats threat to our fauna

IN RESPONSE to Helen Sayers. Australia is currently the world leader for native fauna extinction rates thanks to these “innocent felines.”

It is illegal to let your domestic cat/s free roam. Cats, feral and domestic are opportunistic hunters and they are killing/annihilating an estimated one million native animals across the continent every single night.

That is a huge problem and a top priority for the CSIRO. We’re not talking about commercially farmed birds, chickens, quails, ducks, etc. Cats currently threaten more than 100 native species in Australia.

They have already caused the extinction of some ground-dwelling birds, reptiles and small to mediumsized mammals.

They are a major cause of decline for many land-based endangered animals such as the bilby, bandicoot, bettong and numbat. Many native animals are struggling to survive so reducing the number killed by this introduced predator will allow their populations to grow.

Feral and domestic cats carry infectious diseases like Toxoplasmosis which can be transmitted to native animals, domestic livestock and humans.

The black breasted button quail has only just been sighted again in the Toowoomba region again for the first time in 20 years. The world’s largest cat-proof enclosure was just constructed in central Australia at Newhaven in an attempt to safeguard our dwindling native wildlife populations.

All told, extrapolating from the data, the researchers estimate the feral cat population in Australia, which totals between two and six million, now gobbles up 596 million lizards per year. Add in domestic pet cats that are allowed to roam outdoors and the total number jumps to 649 million reptiles lost to felines each year. That’s on top of 316 million birds cats kill annually in Australia. Yes, this is a big concern.

As an Australian wildlife conservationist, I have every right to dispose of any trespassing feline.

KEV McKAY, Harristown