Posted on 07/17/2015 1:41:18 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
The Australian government announced plans to cull up to 2 million feral cats by 2020 in a bid to preserve dozens of native species that authorities claim face extinction because of the cats' predatory behavior.
Speaking to a national radio station, Gregory Andrews, the country's first threatened-species Commissioner, said Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt "is declaring war on feral cats, and he's asked me to take charge of that program."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
BUT, that ain't gonna happen.......
When they get done down there, can they come here to Austin, Texas and kill the feral cats that are so overrunning the city that they are expanding in small groups into the surrounding suburbs at an alarming rate.
Rabbits, frogs, you name it. Lots of exotic animals get brought over there as pets and then escape, and since they have no natural predators or competition, they flourish. Because the place is so isolated biologically, pretty much any ordinary mammal is “exotic” over there.
“the damage these non-native invasive species do to wildlife - especially songbirds”
Well, according to Darwin, there is no such thing as “damage”, only selection. Our housecats are just being helpful and selecting only the fittest birds to found the future generations.
Toads. *SHUDDER*
We had the strangest summer a few years back. Total drought. It was something I’d never seen before and I’ve lived here (WI) for 55 years now.
Anyhow, there were these HUGE frogs - they weren’t toads, but they looked like Leopard Frogs on steroids. I never did figure out what they were. Even though I live across from a lake, these frogs were EVERYWHERE on my farm during this drought. Anything that had water in it, like rain barrels or watering cans was fair game.
They even got into my basement somehow! I re-located DOZENS of them to a retention pond at work. *SHUDDER* Thank God for ice cream pails with lids, LOL!
It was awful. Like a plague. So, my hearts DO go out to the Australians and what they’ve put up with, via invasive species.
Import monkeys to kill the cats, tigers to kill the monkeys, elephants to kill the tigers...
Something like that? ;)
I think that was more the problem in Hawaii. Rats came over on ships, then they brought in snakes to eat the rats, but the snakes became a problem, so they brought in mongooses to eat the snakes, etc.
In Australia, it is just people bringing in pets, and then the pets getting loose that seems to be the issue.
When people dump cats in the country where I live, the coyotes eat well.
Further, Spotted Owls roost where ever they please, and not exclusively in old growth timber. Many a paid protestor made a killing on the whole fake issue.
They tried to use the sea-going marbled murrelet to do the same thing to the commercial sockeye salmon fishery on the US side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Guys wound up using an expensive 10 inch mesh on the top 10 feet of their driftnets, allowing most of the sockeye to pass through as an “unintended” consequence just to protect birds that had almost no interaction with drift nets unless the net was set directly on the birds resulting in both bird death and $4000 driftnet loss as the riptides the birds frequented had only bait fish and were in shallow water.
Oh boy are you gonna get it from the emotional catophiles.
*APPLAUSE* LOL!
What the cats need is natural predator that will take care of the cats. But what kind.
Pythons might do it or a combination of predators that would feed well and do the job.
Coyotes could be introduced to control the cats and rabbits, but they would probably find koalas to be tasty delicacies, and the sheep ranchers wouldn’t be too happy.
5.56mm
Australia has gone through this with multiple introduced species, mostly introduced to try to control the previous species that took over.
Then make Washington DC a refuge. Lots of rodents there.
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