In 1788, domestic cats arrived in Australia with the first European immigrants. As the first cat to appear in Australia, the domestic cat has been able to breed rapidly after its arrival. Over the next 70 years, domestic cats have spread throughout Australia. Some domestic cats live in human homes and are pet cats; some domestic cats run into the wild to breed and become "wild cats".
Pictured: Wildcats in the wild in Australia
Today, wildcats have reached the point of flooding in Australia. According to John Warnerski, a biologist at Charles Darwin University, wildcats cover 99.9% of Australia's total land area, with an average of about 2.8 million wildcats living in the wild each year, a number that can balloon to 5.6 million at many times.
Pictured: Wildcats hunt birds
According to the Australian government document "Tackling the Wildcat Epidemic: A Plan to Save Australia's Wildlife," a wildcat kills an average of 390 mammals, 370 invertebrates, 225 reptiles, 130 birds and 44 frogs each year, and around 1.4 billion wild animals are fed by wildcats each year across Australia. Wildcats pose a threat to the survival of Australia's 74 species of mammals, 40 species of birds, 21 species of reptiles, and 4 species of amphibians, causing them to decrease in numbers and even endanger them, so much so that biologists call Australian wildcats "catalysts for species extinction".
Pictured: Some wild animals killed by wild cats
Millions of wildcats pose a huge threat to Australia's native species and ecology. In order to control the growth and spread of feral cats, in recent years, the Australian government has taken a series of measures, such as the use of poison bait to kill, set traps to kill, encourage people to shoot with shotguns, and so on. So, how effective are these measures?
According to a recent report released by the Australian Federal Parliament, "there is currently no way to better control the number of feral cats", and under various measures, the number of wildcats is now reduced by less than 10% of their total every year. Due to the large population base of feral cats, once the conditions are right, their numbers will grow to the level before the decline.
Pictured: A wild cat that was killed
For example, Australia has studied several kinds of poisonous baits against wild cats, which will die after eating them, but it turns out that the role of poisonous baits is very limited, because wild cats prefer live prey; catching with traps (such as cage traps and animal clips) is also a way, but the location of traps will be limited, and require skilled personnel to operate, time-consuming, laborious and expensive, and can not be widely used; hunting wildcats with shotguns is a commonly thought method, but the number of hunters is limited, and the impact on the wildcat population is small...
Pictured: A hunted feral cat
So, australia's wildcats, really can't control it?
Controlling invasive species has always been a challenge worldwide, not to mention the millions of agile, hard-to-track wildcats. Experts from all walks of life in Australia are trying to discuss other approaches, such as the development of new poison baits; some have proposed the use of gene editing technology to change the genes of wild cats to make wild cats susceptible to disease or infected with specific toxins, but the development of this technology is in its infancy and there are some ethical issues.
At the same time, to prevent endangered species from being hunted down by feral cats, Australia is working to create a "cat-free zone" or "cat-free island" to bring endangered species into it. This measure is expensive, but it is a good idea until the feral cat population is controlled.