Back in the 1960s, Tom Lewis as NSW National Parks Minister, invited his
counterparts from other States to meet to discuss matters of mutual
interest. From this evolved CONCOM - the Council of Nature Comnservation
Ministers. (Does it still exist, I wonder.) The annual CONCOM meeting was
preceded by a Senior Officers' meeting to sort out an agenda, organise
papers, etc. Until the Qld NP&WS was established in 1975, I represented
Queensland at these officers' meetings.
[And diverging from the subject of cats for a moment, each year we officers
placed high on the agenda, the matter of land clearing and the need for
controls ... and without fail, at each CONCOM meeting after the Chairman's
introduction some Minister would move that the land clearing item be moved
to the bottom of the agenda and be replaced by kangaroo harvesting. The
Ministers never ever (in my time) got to the land clearing item!]
Feral cats were recognised as a problem, and they were of especial concern
to the then Director of National Parks in Victoria, Len Smith. (Dr Smith,
as you probably know, is the author of several books about lyrebirds.) The
Victorian Service was then testing several products which apparently showed
promise as cat attractants. I don't know the final outcome, but it is
something that might be worth following up for anyone involved in trapping
cats more wary than Bill Moorehead's (9/8/01) Bundaberg moggies.
Syd Curtis
(More on CONCOM and cats in my next posting.)
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