In the deep winter weeks of last July, Shane Morse and Kevin Figliomeni nearly always got up before the sun rose. They awoke next to the remains of a campfire or, occasionally, in a roadside motel, and in the darkness before dawn they began unloading poisoned sausage from their refrigerated truck. The sausage was for […]
More than 1 million native Australian birds are killed across the country by cats every day, new research shows. The study, published in the journal Biological Conversation, estimates feral cats kill 316 million birds a year, while pet cats kill 61 million birds annually. More than 99% are native. “Everyone knows that cats kill birds, […]
The only sure way to prevent pet cats from killing birds is to keep them inside or to walk them outdoors on a leash. These methods are encouraged by veterinarians, animal welfare groups and environmentalists. Yet, less than half of the estimated 73 million cats in the United States live indoors according to the National […]
Feral cats now inhabit virtually the entire Australian landscape, and have been implicated in multiple recent mammal extinctions by conservationists. Illuminating the urgency of controlling cat populations across the continent, a new study in Biological Conservation finds that cats occupy over 99.8% of Australia. The study was conducted by over forty scientists—led by wildlife ecologists […]
New baits targeting feral cats could aid the recovery of 53 threatened species covered under Western Australia’s largest conservation project, according to the state’s environment minister, Albert Jacob. The West Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife has spent more than 10 years developing baits to appeal to the notoriously fussy palate of cats. The end […]
Feral cats are cats who have had little or no significant contact with humans. These cats are used to fending for themselves and don’t do well as an indoor pet cat. Many cat lovers have turned to Trap-Neuter-Return programs (also known as TNR) to handle the feral cats in their communities. There may already be […]