If domestic cats wore bell collars in urban
areas the numbers of native birds caught and killed could be reduced by as
much as half, a new University of Otago study shows.
Dr Yolanda van
Heezik and Dr Christoph Matthaei from the Department of Zoology - with
Zoology Honours student Jo Gordon - studied cats known by their owners to
be prolific hunters.
They asked owners of 37 Dunedin cats to record
the number of prey caught and brought back home during a six-week period
while wearing a belled collar, and during another six week period without
a belled collar.
?We found that cats caught fewer birds while
wearing the belled collar,? Dr van Heezik says.
?This study shows
it is worthwhile for domestic cats to wear bells and would go some way
towards reducing the huge numbers of native birds cats catch. It won?t
eliminate the problem completely, but it?s a start.?
Previous
studies have shown that domestic cats kill tens of thousands of native
birds each year in New Zealand.
?People might consider cats as a
nuisance because they dig in their gardens, or they may be concerned about
cats roaming for welfare issues, but people hardly ever think about the
impacts cats are having on our native birds.
?Most cats don?t catch
a lot of prey and they may bring back perhaps only one bellbird a year.
But if you consider the large number of domestic cats in towns and cities,
then the cumulative impact is likely to be huge,? she says.
In New
Zealand urban environments, there are on average 220 domestic cats per
square kilometre, and each cat has an average travelling range of about
2.2ha.
In total during the six-week study, the cats not wearing the
collar caught 378 animals, including 82 birds. When the cats wore bells,
they caught only 41 birds by comparison.
This study has been
published in the Australian journal Wildlife Research.
