An interesting article. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/07/4203004.htm Carl Clifford
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Peter If your objective is to reduce/eliminate the population of cats in a particular area, you have to prevent recruitment to or replacement of that population. That may be achieved by expanding the area in which the population reduction program is conducted or by creating barriers to migration into the area. Cheers David On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Peter Shute < pshute@nuw.org.au> wrote:
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If the increase is due to cats from surrounding areas moving in then the total number of cats is still less than before, even though there may be more in the trapping area. If they need them to be reduced in that particular area, doesn’t that mean they need to trap outside the target area too? Or perhaps even trap only outside the target area? Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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The lesson from this study, and many others involving feral cats and other pest animals, is that you can’t rely on one control method to reduce or eliminate a population. However, I find it hard to believe that the presence or absence of dominant animals can change the carrying capacity of an area. Hopefully, when the cat problem is tackled seriously, it will be on an all encompassing evidence-based strategy. Cheers David On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:19 PM, Carl Clifford < carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote:
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I don’t know much about cats but I remember a study on the effects of the removal of Carrion Crows from a Common Eider colony at Forvie NNR in Aberdeenshire Scotland. Removal by trapping and humanely killing the crows (a serious predator of eider eggs) lead to an increase in nest / egg predation as many immature non territorial birds moved in and all predated eggs. By keeping the territorial pair but preventing successful breeding by pricking the eggs, meant the pair drove off any other birds encroaching on their territory but as they never had chicks to raise egg predation rates stayed very low throughout the nesting season. Counter intuitive but sometimes total removal of predators is not the best solution. Dom On 7 Apr 2015 4:50 pm, “Carl Clifford” < carlsclifford@gmail.com> wrote:
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