Cats: they might rule the internet, but the Australian government has a merciless stance toward them. To “solve” the feral cat problem, the government plans to kill two million free-roaming cats (a large chunk of the total feral cat population) by 2020. That is approximately between two and six million felines.
As CNN reports, certain areas in Australia are even more committed to exterminating public enemy number one. In the northeastern state of Queensland, a council offers a $10 ($7) bounty per feral cat scalp. The animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has slammed the policy for being “cruel.”
New Zealand has a similar stance toward felines. Prominent environmentalists have proposed a cat-free future, that has led to a heated debate on the merit of exterminating or allowing feline cats. In this article, we will dive into both sides.
The simple answer to that is that feral cats kill. The first cat arrived in Australia in the seventeenth century. Since then, their numbers have skyrocketed. The feral cat population is estimated to cover 99.8 percent of the country today.
Unlike domesticated cats, feral cats live in the wild. They might belong to the same species, but feral cats are forced to hunt for survival. Therefore, they typically act a lot less “cute” when approached by humans — or other critters, for that matter.
An estimated twenty mammal species have gone extinct due to the feral cat population, as reported by Gregory Andrews, national commissioner of threatened species. He said that as a result, feral cats are the single greatest threat to native species on Australia.
That's a big deal, considering the island nation was cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. As a result, 80 percent of Australia’s mammals and 45 percent of its birds are found nowhere else on Earth.
Victims of feral cats include native reptiles and birds. A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of the Environment and Energy said that cats are believed to kill over one million native birds, and 1.7 million reptiles across Australia each day.
Feral cats also prey on the brush-tailed rabbit-rat, a species classified as “vulnerable” by the Australian government. “We are not culling cats for the sake of it, we are not doing so because we hate cats,” Andrews said.
It appears that those in favor of exterminating the wild felines are driven by a compulsion to protect native species and the fragile ecosystem. There are of course valid arguments against the government’s plan.
According to CNN, it's possible the government is creating a stir to avoid tackling more pressing concerns, like habitat loss by urban expansion, logging, and mining. Those sensitive issues are devastating the environment, perhaps far more than hoards of feral cats. Yet, is action being taken to curb unsustainable activity? Possibly not to the extent, it should be.
The method of poisoning cats is also a topic of discussion. According to the New York Times, poisoned sausages will be dropped from planes to thin out the feral feline population. The sausages will be made from chicken fat, kangaroo meat, herbs, and spices. Reportedly, they're capable of killing a cat within fifteen minutes of being eaten.
The sausages are manufactured at a factory in Perth and are intended to be dropped from planes at intervals of fifty kilometers in places where cats freely roam. To make sure the sausages taste good, the man thatdeveloped them tested them on his cats. Obviously, he omitted the poison.
“They’ve got to taste good,” Dr. Dave Algar said. “They are the cat’s last meal.”
h/t CNN, CBS Local, Truth Theory
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