Bardot Slams Aus Cat Cull

[icyfroth]

French actress Brigitte Bardot has condemned an Australian plan to cull two million feral cats, blamed for wreaking havoc on native animals, to stop them further harming vanishing populations.

Feral cats have been identified as the main culprit behind Australia's high rate of mammal extinction, with more than 10 percent of species wiped out since Europeans settled here two centuries ago. 

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has said the advice he has received is that the cats number 20 million across the country and devour countless native animals every night."They are tsunamis of violence and death for Australia's native species," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week.

Hunt said a target of eradicating two million feral cats had been set for 2020, in addition to creating feral-free enclosures to aid the recovery of birds and mammals among other measures.

The government has stressed the eradication of cats will be carried out humanely, but Bardot urged the government to reconsider the plan which she said was "appalling" to the international community.

"This animal genocide is inhumane and ridiculous. In addition to being cruel, killing these cats is absolutely useless since the rest of them will keep breeding," she said in the English translation of the open letter to Hunt. 

Entire Article Here

Animal Genocide? Of Cats? What planet is this lady living on?

Everybody knows I love cats, but I'm realistic enough to understand the damage feral cats are doing to our native animals. There needs to be a cull.

How does she suggest we bring the numbers down otherwise?

Make Akubra hats out of them? 

[***super_nova***]

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@lionrose.7 wrote:

You have to start at the beginning of the problem and make it a law that all cats have to be neutered.

Feral cats can be culled in a humane way.

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What does that has to do wit feral cat population?  Feral cats have been in Australia for a long time, some came with various new arrivals from Asia long before white settlers, and there is a genetic difference between them and our domestic cat.  Most feral cats live long way from human settlements and many would more likely kill a domestic cat than to mate with it.  And do not forget that the reason why sailors kept cats on ships was to keep rats under check.  And rats will wreck even more havoc amongst native animals and are harder to eliminate because number of native animals would be likely to eat the same baits.

Native animals living in densely inhabited parts of Australia are under stress because we do not allow any vegetation that is  suitable for making nests.  How many people have trees with hollows, or have dense scrub and dead wood around their gardens?  How many people plant vegetation that will feed native critters?  

And by the way, it is compulsory in most part of Autralia to have cats desexed and confined at night.

[the_great_she_elephant]

Are you sure of that information? The only reference I have been able to find regarding Asian immigration before white settlement is from the Museum of Victoria http://museumvictoria.com.au/origins/history.aspx?pid=27

  History of immigration from Indonesia

     Before white settlement of Australia, Indonesian fishermen from Makasar established trading contact with Indigenous communities in northern Australia. They constructed outdoor factories to process trepang (sea slug) for the Chinese market, but established no permanent settlement.

Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_in_Australia  states:

Historical records date the introduction of cats to Australia at around 1804 and that cats first became feral around Sydney by 1820.There are now an estimated 2.7 million domestic cats and over 18 million feral cats in Australia.

http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/rzeller/feral_cats.htm

Cats were introduced in Australia with the European settlement, but it is a possibility they could have arrived in the 17th century with Dutch shipwrecks. 

Also according to the Dept for the Environment. 

http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive-species/feral-animals-australia/feral-cats

Feral cats are the same species as domestic cats, however they live and reproduce in the wild and survive by hunting or scavenging. They are found all over Australia in all habitats, including forests, woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and arid areas.