A .22 stops cats breeding, works on Toms and Females. Funny that. Barney
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I’ve been reading a bit on the classification of cats (feral) in QLD – they are ranked the same as rabbits, yet people are free to own and do what they will with them (eg, not mandatory for desexing/registering). Owing a rabbit comes with a $40k fine in QLD. The difference – rabbits, as a class 1 pest, impact the economy by ruining pastoral lands, cats **only** eat a phenomenal amount of wildlife and spread toxo – neither of which (short term) cause enough stir for action. Frustrating!
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One control method rarely makes much difference to the target population. The feral cat population will not be reduced without multiple control mechanisms; shooting, trapping, baiting, exclusion fences, biological agents, competition from other predators, predation by higher order predators, eliminating sources of recruitment to the population, etc. Sterilisation could be another method but only if it could achieved through a biological agent (STD) that would spread through a local population. Cats have overlapping ranges so sterilising and releasing one or two will just mean that the remainder will have greater breeding success. Shark Bay is a great example of how difficult it is to eradicate cats. One misguided person with a couple of morggies could undo all of that work. Cheers David Sent from my iPhone
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This system can work best with animals that have stable populations in which territories are defended and for example one male controls all the females and prevents them mating with other females and especially if all the mating happens at one specific time of year. In such a case it can help to sterilise that male. If that doesn’t happen then you would need to sterilise all or most of them. But do cats live in such systems….. I doubt it. Sterilising one male cat in a population is pretty useless unless he is the only one that all the girls desire. Sterilising all the females would be great if we can find a way to do it. Philip [mailto:birding-aus-bounces@birding-aus.org] On Behalf Of Bill Stent Sent: Tuesday, 17 March 2015 12:38 PM for feral cats ??????? My understand was that sterilising a cat and releasing it (or better still, sterilising it with some sort of dart) is much more efficient in medium to long term population control than simply shooting it dead. If you shoot it, another cat takes its place, with an overall effect on the population of zero (that is, a total waste of time and effort). But if you sterilise it and relese it, the cat continues defending its territory and keeping others at bay for some years. This would result in a much more effective population crash, I would think. The more scientific or research-based contributors might like to comment please. Bill
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That’s the theory. But if you don’t neuter enough of them, then when the neutered cats die from natural causes, they’ll still get replaced, and they’ll still have been there hunting for that whole time. Which still works out to a waste of time. If you’re trying to neuter every feral cat in the outback, how do you make sure you’ve got them all? How do you tell which ones you’ve already done? At least with shooting and poisoning you can tell that for sure. Peter Shute
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On the principle that there’s no point in shooting a fox, because another will come to the funeral! Anthea Fleming On 17/03/2015 12:38 PM, Bill Stent wrote:
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My understand was that sterilising a cat and releasing it (or better still, sterilising it with some sort of dart) is much more efficient in medium to long term population control than simply shooting it dead. If you shoot it, another cat takes its place, with an overall effect on the population of zero (that is, a total waste of time and effort). But if you sterilise it and relese it, the cat continues defending its territory and keeping others at bay for some years. This would result in a much more effective population crash, I would think. The more scientific or research-based contributors might like to comment please. Bill
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