While most grey nomads will be aware that Australia has a really serious feral cat problem, the sheer scale of the issue sometimes takes even the experts by surprise.
A recent study at Boolcoomatta Reserve in South Australia, 100 kilometres west of Broken Hill, found the 150-year-old former sheep station was absolutely teeming with feral cats.
Using 24-hour motion-sensitive cameras placed on 60 sites across the 63,000-hectare property, researchers monitored passing wildlife over a period of 45 days and identified 95 individual cats, some of them more than a metre long.
The research team from Bush Heritage Australia and Flinders University were flabbergasted by the results.
Emily Mathews from Flinders University told the ABC that the research team trapped 15 cats and analysis of their stomach contents revealed bittersweet news.
“The cats’ stomachs had a range of bird species, reptile and mammal species and we were also able to identify a new reptile that hadn’t been seen on the property before — a legless lizard species,” ,” Ms Mathews said. “That was pretty exciting for the property … but not so exciting that it had been found in a cat’s stomach.”
The ABC reports that feral cat numbers are all the more concerning as the study revealed two endangered species in the area: the yellow-footed rock wallaby, which was hunted to near extinction until the early 20th century; and the plains wanderer, a quail-like bird whose tendency to run rather than fly from predators makes it particularly vulnerable to feral cats.
While the discoveries have delighted researchers, the proximity of so many feral cats has forced a rethink of the measures used to combat predators.
“We knew that we were having a very high impact on wild dogs and foxes across Boolcoomatta but cats are a little bit more cryptic and difficult to manage,” Glenn Norris from Bush Heritage Australia told the ABC. “We knew they were high in numbers and our control efforts need to be lifted … but detecting the 95 individuals across those cameras was quite an eye-opener for us.”
Camp on some of the tanks around Cobar NSW – Of a night you will see several “Moggys” the size of Labradors. Pity the gun laws now make it too difficult to travel with a shotgun (legally).
Yes. They are everywhere. We do our bit to save out native speices.
These vermin, love hanging around bins at rest areas and overnight stops.
Our best Moggy to date weighed a whopping 13.2kg = To a mid size dog.
They can easly and do kill many new born lambs. Its not even funny.
I help the farmers anywhere any time, at no cost.
On one property in one night I took 19 off the list.