While it is undeniable that owned domestic cats Felis catus (Mammalia: Felidae) kill large numbers of wildlife, it is contentious if this has significant impacts on wildlife populations. Under the precautionary principle such uncertainty does not preclude measures to reduce putative risk, but action should follow consultation with stakeholders. To initiate such consultation for the City of Armadale, Western Australia, we surveyed urban and rural residents to determine their opinions regarding putative impacts of owned cats on wildlife and the acceptability of proposed regulations. Key statements accepted by 70% or more of respondents, irrespective of their residence, gender or cat ownership status, included: (i) there is a need to regulate owned domestic cats; (ii) the presence of cats in nature reserves is harmful to wildlife; (iii) cats not owned by licensed breeders should be desexed; and (iv) local councils should be empowered to restrict the maximum number of cats per household. Seventy per cent or more of owners agreed to keep their cats on their property from sunset to sunrise and to register them if these measures became compulsory. All groups except urban men also indicated 70% or greater willingness to keep their cats on their property constantly if required. However, fewer than 40% of owners supported empowering local councils to enforce cat-free zones. In this community, cat regulation excluding catfree zones should enjoy support. Similar approaches should be effective wherever the environmental impacts of owned domestic cats are debated, because compliance with such regulations should be high.

No abstract

No abstract

We took advantage of cat regulations enacted within differing subdivisions in the City of Armadale, Western Australia, to test the hypotheses that the species diversity (measured by the Shannon-Weiner index) and abundance of small and medium-sized mammals should be higher in native bushland within or adjacent to subdivisions where cats are restricted compared to similar areas where cats are not restricted. There were three different regimes of cat regulation: no-cat zone (strict prohibition of cat ownership applying in one site), compulsory belling of cats and night curfew at one site, and unregulated zones (free-roaming cats applying at two sites). Both sets of cat regulations were in place for approximately 10 years prior to our survey. We also measured structural and floristic features of the vegetation at each site that might influence the species diversity and abundance of small and medium-sized mammals independently or interactively with cat activity. No significant differences in species diversity were found across the sites and KTBA (known-to-be-alive) statistics for Brushtail Possums Trichosurus vulpecula and Southern Brown Bandicoots Isoodon obesulus, the two most abundant medium-sized mammals present, were similar across all sites. The smaller Mardo Antechinus flavipes, which could be regarded as the most susceptible to cat predation of all the native species trapped because of its size, was trapped mostly at an unregulated cat site. Total mammals trapped at the unregulated cat sites exceeded those caught at the two sites with restrictions, but these unregulated sites also had significantly denser vegetation and there was a borderline (p = 0.05) rank correlation between vegetation density and mammal captures across all sites. It appears that pet cats are not the major influence on the species diversity or abundance of small and medium-sized mammals at these sites and that vegetation characteristics may be more important.

Recovery plans in all countries also contained 37 % or more citations to 'grey literature', discounted in NRAEs. If NRAEs discourage peer-reviewed publication at any level they could exacerbate the trend not to publish information useful for applied conservation, possibly harming conservation efforts. While indicating the potential for an impact does not establish that it occurs, it does suggest preventive steps. NRAEs considering the proportion of papers in top journals may discourage publication in lower-ranked journals, because one way to increase the proportion of outputs in top journals is by not publishing in lower ones. Instead, perhaps only a user-nominated subset of publications could be evaluated, a department's or an individual's share of the top publications in a field could be noted, or innovative new multivariate assessments of research productivity applied, including social impact.