I am with you Denise. There are a few responsible cat owners who keep their pets in doors or in a run in the yard but the majority don’t. With the millions of domestic cats in Australia the toll on wildlife must be great. People are usually aware of the impact of feral cats on native wildlife but don’t realise that their moggy is also a major threat. Any cat not in the owners house or cat run should be declared ‘feral’ and be eliminated. Years ago the NSW government produced a green paper on companion animals which called for serious and much needed controls on domestic pets, including cats. The pet food industry lobbied the government and the end result was a lame act, particularly with respect to cats. My aging mother-in-law, who had the early stages of dementia at the time, was being disturbed at night by a neighbour’s cat. The Council ranger said that they could only act after it was established that the cat was a nuisance and that my mother-in-law would need to keep a diary on the movements of the cat. I don’t blame the ranger as he has to work within the legislation but the control of cats is like the human over-population issue, the elephant in the room. Regards Greg Dr Greg. P. Clancy Ecologist and Birding-wildlife Guide | PO Box 63 Coutts Crossing NSW 2460 | 02 6649 3153 | 0429 601 960 http://www.gregclancyecologistguide.com http://gregswildliferamblings.blogspot.com.au/ —–Original Message—– From: Denise Goodfellow Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2014 4:02 PM To: Carl Clifford Cc: Birding Aus Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Threatened species commissioner appointed to helpsave native wildlife | Environment | theguardian.com I challenge prominent Australians to stick their necks out and call for control of all cats. Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow PO Box 71 Darwin River, NT, Australia 0841 On 2 Jul 2014, at 2:56 pm, Carl Clifford <carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote: > Nice to see that the Government is doing something about feral cat > control. What the results will be, who knows. An awful lot of bait will > have to be laid for effective control. > > http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/02/threatened-species-commissioner-to-combat-decline-of-native-wildlife > > Carl Clifford > _______________________________________________ > Birding-Aus mailing list > Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org > To change settings or unsubscribe visit: > http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
Kim We have small Children’s and Olive pythons living in our drains and roof. I can send you a photo if you wish of one of our housemates in action! We now have no rats. Obviously this is not the solution for an inner city dwelling, but it works well out here. Denise On 2 Jul 2014, at 4:45 pm, Carl Clifford < carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
OMG Denise, haven’t you seen all the cat posts on Facebook? Have you surfed the internet to see all the cat lovers and their support services? If the Australian conservation community goes head-to-head with the world of cat lovers, I have no doubt at all who will win – and in a flogging! And will that flogging advance the conservation cause or set it back disastrously? IMHO conservationists will have to be very smart about the way they deal with the cat issue. The sort of ideas I am reading on birding-aus at the moment would be a bad move. Game over, in fact. It will take restraint, empathy and intelligence to have any chance of solving this one! The big stick won’t work. cheers Andrew PS re smoking, did you read last week’s Saturday Paper page one article? PPS I don’t own a cat. PPPS I love you all so please don’t flame me!!
On 02/07/2014, at 5:12 PM, Denise Goodfellow wrote: _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
My mother told of inadvertently eating cat dim sims in Melbourne during the War. The Chinese restaurant was prosecuted which is how she found out what she had been eating! Denise On 2 Jul 2014, at 4:50 pm, Carl Clifford < carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
Perhaps we should be promoting the eating qualities of cats. I have inadvertently eaten kitty kebabs in Beijing and found them to be quite tasty. Carl Clifford _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
Kim, perhaps you should swap your cat for something like a Jack Russell terrier. My daughter moved into an old inner city house with a lot of rodents about 18 months ago. Twelve months ago, she inherited a young Jack Russell. She now has no rodent problem. Admittedly she does have a slight problem with small craters in the back yard, caused by a rather over-enthusiastic ratter, but it is a small price to pay for a fairly environmentally safe rodent control measure. Carl Clifford _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
Hi all Many years ago I had a cat. One day it brought home a Forest Kingfisher. I never kept another. But there was another reason for my not wanting to own a cat. I lean red that the children of Aboriginal relatives coming to town for boarding school or shopping, had discovered the delights of kittens, either through advertising or classmates. Next thing kittens were being taken back to outstations in Arnhem Land. On a camping trip to the East Alligator in the late 1970s I awoke, one night to find half a dozen pairs of cat eyes watching me and my friend. Combined with the habitat clearing brought about by too frequent or destructive fire cats appear to be a major reason for the decline of mammals and some birds in the Top End. Down south the presence of foxes (and rabbits) may muddy the picture, but neither exist here in the Top End. Perhaps the overt keeping of cats should be delegitimised like cigarette smoking. That doesn’t necessarily stop people from smoking, but it may mean that cats are less attractive and have less status than our native wildlife. Denise On 2 Jul 2014, at 4:27 pm, Kim Sterelny < kim.sterelny@anu.edu.au> wrote: _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org
Sometimes you have to be somewhat in-your-face with cat owners. I have neighbours who brought home 3 semi-feral mogs from a rural property. One of the cats turned out to be somewhat more feral than the others and preferred its food on the wing. I twice found signs of attacks on Noisy Miners in my yard and literally rescued a Rainbow Lorikeet from the jaws of the cat, in one week. Unfortunately the Lorikeet did not survive. When I brought it home from the vets after it was euthanised, I presented the corpse to the neighbors, say that as their cat had killed the bird, they perhaps would like to dispose of the body. Shortly after, the neighbours built an enclosed run for the cats ( by this there were six) and they then disposed of three of the cats. Carl Clifford _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org