Thanks for putting up the link
The take home form this is the apparent extent of cat predation is it is most serious in the remote interior (not withstanding small islands/seabird colonies). Its free-living feral cats that are involved out there not domestic moggies.
That said I suspect 'greenwash' suburban domestic cat containment programs have little / no effect on a large or even on small scale on the incidence/ survival of bird populations. I wait with interest for someone to initiate some science to see if such
programs actually do any measurable good. Up till now there seems to me to be some reluctance to do this work, I would like to be surprised over that.
Are these quoted numbers important - don't know, they might be. I suspect, as stated, cats are most likely to be important when populations are laid low by a host of other bigger factors. While fixing the cats may help, it does nothing about those bigger
factors - land management, farming, climate change, disease etc.etc. which are doing the structural damage.
I wonder about the extraction of bird predation from the other predation cats do - I suspect most feral cats in the arid zone eat small reptiles, large insects and mice as a matter of first choice, simply because they are usually easier to catch and eat
and are more frequent in those environments than birds. I doubt birds form a major food source for many cats in the arid zone relative to these other potential food items.
There appears to be no obvious evidence of a wave of extinction of birds from mainland Australia with the arrival of cats. Could it be that cats got here so early that scientists we not around to see it -maybe or maybe not. Contrast that with the arrival
of the Fox and its effect on Australian mammals (and some birds). Also the NZ situation with the arrival of land mammals in general. Australian birds clearly can live with mammalian predators, unlike say many native species in NZ which simply cannot.
Reduction of the impact of feral cats is a good idea, but is a very long-term process which will not be achieved with stop start funding and one off actions. What is going on at Mulligans flat and similar places is good and should allow us to see if there
is any benefit in extending this approach. There are other approaches that may help broad-scale in areas 'beyond the wire'. However when money is not plentiful is it better to spend most of it on dealing with 'first order' issues - like land use, climate
change, new disease threats etc.?, Cats in my view are now a second order issue that has been here at least 200 years and probably longer.
Education of the public is important. I have cats, they help my mental health and are valued company. I keep then in and in a run, mainly because I do not want them hit by cars or attacked by dogs/people and yes I don't want them eating my resident birds.
Mind you, the resident birds seem to be thriving in spite of other cats present. What those birds needed first was there to be suitable habitat to establish in our relatively new suburb, with that they were able to 'overcome' the presence of cats - there
is a message in that.
David
