FERAL CATS ARE ON THE RAMPAGE RIGHT ACROSS AUSTRALIA

Feral cats are a complete menace in Australia nowadays, anywhere from Cape York to the outer semi-rural suburbs of our capital cities. They've bred up to a staggering estimated population of 20 million, and they are killing an unimaginable amount of native wildlife.

 

Reliable estimates indicate that up to 100 million native animals of some kind, be they mammals, reptiles, birds and including small marsupials like gliders, bandicoots and bilbies, are killed by feral cats every single night.

The problem of feral cats at least has ideological foes united in one accord and agreeing that something very radical and wide scale must be done to eradicate as many of them as possible and soon.

 

Those foes being environmentalists and the federal environment minister Greg Hunt, who has just launched a very ambitious plan to cull a relatively small percentage but still huge amount of feral cats - like in the order of 2 million over a 5 year period.

If 20 million feral cats are doing the damage they are to native wildlife populations and putting 20 species at palpable risk of extinction, then it would seem apparent that Hunt's 2 million cull target is manifestly inadequate.

 

The anti really needs to be upped to find some form of biological control which poses no risk to native wildlife which succeeds in exterminating a lot more feral cats, like what myxomatosis achieved with rabbits all those decades ago.

A militant and noisy minority of totally unreasonable environmentalists who don't have the rationale or common sense to make a distinction between feral animals, such as cats, pigs, and brumbies, and all the other animals which suffer and are threatened with extinction because of them, are already jumping on Hunt's back and venting condemnation against this pragmatic, logical and desperately needed feral cat cull.

 

I love animals and I love cats, but I would hate to see a long list of Australian native animals, and birds as well, become extinct due to inaction NOW to eliminate a feral pest which is wiping them all out.