Cat ecology, impacts and management in Australia

Legge, Sarah; Dickman, Chris R.; Doherty, Tim S.; McGregor, Hugh; Murphy, Brett P.

doi:10.1071/wrv47n8_ed

Cited by 15 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Other methods in use once stray pets were caught commonly included drowning, strangling, clubbing, and herding them into gas chambers, although these practices were no longer widespread by the beginning of the twentieth century. Poisoning was less common but is still in use and in some places still has its advocates for truly feral cats (28)(29)(30).…”

Section: The Protective Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In its submission to the parliamentary cat inquiry undertaken in 2020 by the Australian House of Representatives, the Threatened Species Recovery Hub described feral cats as being "largely unmanaged, " almost 30 years after cats were formally declared to be a biodiversity threat and after plans to abate the threat they posed were supposed to be developed, funded, and at work (62). In a separate publication in the same year, the Hub scientists described domestic pet cats as "ill-governed" (28). Nothing much had apparently changed since a landmark review, published a decade earlier by some of the same principals, said that cat management in Australia, despite a long record of apparent interest and concern, was "in its infancy" (46).…”

Section: Australia: the Effective Proscription Of Tnrmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A breakthrough might occur with the invention and deployment of new poison delivery systems, although that appears to be at best a fraught proposition (28,29,66), because of public opposition and difficulties with targeting, or with an advance in genetic engineering, but that has major problems of its own (67).…”

Section: Australia: the Effective Proscription Of Tnrmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The principal spur to a more determined and sustained campaign against cats was supposed to be an unimpeachable calculation, or ultra-sophisticated statistical estimation at least, of exactly how many cats exist beyond the bounds of domesticity in Australia, where they live, what they eat, and what proportion of their diet consists of native species (28). The strategic gamble on the part of researchers chasing these numbers was that the impacts of cats on native species, once they were properly quantified, would prove to be so large and so pervasive across the country that the wisdom of killing cats in large numbers-perhaps as many as two million dead cats from a vigorously prosecuted eradication conducted in accordance with the official Threatened Species Strategy ( 14)would be self-evident.…”

Section: The Avoidance Of Stalemate: Turning To Enclosure?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The best numbers show that "over 300,000 feral cats are killed (in Australia) annually, with much of that effort happening outside the traditional conservation sector" (75). That is not a rate of kill sufficient to control, let alone eradicate, the "1.4 to 5.6 million feral cats in the Australian bush (depending on recent rainfall patterns through the arid zone), " to which must be added the 0.7 million living in towns and cities (28).…”

Section: The Avoidance Of Stalemate: Turning To Enclosure?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coping With Human-Cat Interactions Beyond the Limits of Domesticity: Moral Pluralism in the Management of Cats and Wildlife

et al. 2021

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Although human interactions with cats are often even typically analyzed in the context of domesticity, with a focus on what sorts of interactions might make both people and cats “happy at home,” a large number of cats in the world live, for one reason or another, beyond the bounds of domesticity. Human interactions with these more or less free-living cats raise deeply controversial questions about how both the cats and the people they interact with should be sensibly managed, and about the moral imperatives that ought to guide the management of their interactions through the laws and public policies regulating both human interactions with pets and with wildlife. We review the geography of human interactions with cats living beyond the bounds of domesticity. We acknowledge the contributions made to ideas about how to manage cats by the animal protection movement. We review the tensions that have emerged over time between advocates for the eradication of free-living cats, because of the impacts they have on native wildlife species, and those who have imagined alternatives to eradication, most notably one or another variant of trap-neuter-return (TNR). The conflict over how best to deal with cats living beyond the bounds of domesticity and their wildlife impacts raises the prospect of stalemate, and we canvass and critique possibilities for moving beyond that stalemate.

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Section: The Protective Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Australia: the Effective Proscription Of Tnrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Australia: the Effective Proscription Of Tnrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Avoidance Of Stalemate: Turning To Enclosure?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Avoidance Of Stalemate: Turning To Enclosure?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coping With Human-Cat Interactions Beyond the Limits of Domesticity: Moral Pluralism in the Management of Cats and Wildlife

et al. 2021

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Wildlife Conservation on Private Land: A Social-Ecological Systems Study

Taylor,

Brook,

Johnson

et al. 2024

Environmental Management

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As human activity accelerates the global crisis facing wildlife populations, private land conservation provides an example of wildlife management challenges in social-ecological systems. This study reports on the research phase of ‘WildTracker’ - a co-created citizen science project, involving 160 landholders across three Tasmanian regions. This was a transdisciplinary collaboration between an environmental organisation, university researchers, and local landholders. Focusing on mammal and bird species, the project integrated diverse data types and technologies: social surveys, quantitative ecology, motion sensor cameras, acoustic recorders, and advanced machine-learning analytics. An iterative analytical methodology encompassed Pearson and point-biserial correlation for interrelationships, Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) for clustering, and Random Forest machine learning for variable importance and prediction. Taken together, these analyses revealed complex relationships between wildlife populations and a suite of ecological, socio-economic, and land management variables. Both site-scale habitat characteristics and landscape-scale vegetation patterns were useful predictors of mammal and bird activity, but these relationships were different for mammals and birds. Four focal mammal species showed variation in their response to ecological and land management drivers. Unexpectedly, threatened species, such as the eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus), favoured locations where habitat was substantially modified by human activities. The research provides actionable insights for landowners, and highlights the importance of ‘messy,’ ecologically heterogeneous, mixed agricultural landscapes for wildlife conservation. The identification of thresholds in habitat fragmentation reinforced the importance of collaboration across private landscapes. Participatory research models such as WildTracker can complement efforts to address the wicked problem of wildlife conservation in the Anthropocene.

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