Australia to kill cats with Poisoned sausages

[Catherine]

Australia wants to cull 2 million feral cats. There are a lot of arguments for and against and we can go into that issue in this thread. 
However my real focus this time is the method. The plan is to drop poisoned sausages for the cats. They are supposed to die in about 15 minutes. I don't know how humane the death is, but humane or not, there will be a lot of dead cats lying around.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...88071.html

My first thought was to ask what else could eat those sausages. They may end up directly poisoning a lot of other animals.
There are birds that would eat sausages and probably a lot of other things.

What might eat the dead cats? Anything eating a poisoned cat will probably be poisoned as well.

If a dead cat is not eaten or if a sausage is not eaten, the poison can end up in the environment. Water and soil could be contaminated.

As a cull method it can't be controlled or contained. Once the poison is put out there it could continue to kill other wildlife for years to come. It would be almost impossible to clean up the poison once it has been deployed.

This seems to be a poorly thought out idea. It might seem efficient, but it doesn't look at the possible consequences of using poison.

The cull itself is a controversial choice. There is no doubt that the cats are a problem for local Australian wildlife.
However, things that humans do also have effects on wildlife. Protecting wildlife needs to be balanced and it needs to protect wildlife from all sources of danger.

The cat population needs to be reduced and possibly removed from some areas. The need to remove the cats doesn't justify cruelty and cruel methods. There needs to be a humane solution. There also needs to be a safe solution, one that does not do more harm than good.

[Tobi]

It is irresponsible to kill cats with poison. The cats will suffer greatly, and the poison will continue down the food chain. SOMETHING is going to start nibbling on dead cats.
This happened with wolf kills and strychnine....some time ago. I have been trying to find out about it...

[Catherine]

Quote:It is irresponsible to kill cats with poison. The cats will suffer greatly, and the poison will continue down the food chain. SOMETHING is going to start nibbling on dead cats.

This happened with wolf kills and strychnine....some time ago. I have been trying to find out about it...

This is exactly what I was thinking about. The strychnine killed wolves, but it also killed little owls and many other animals for years. 

I agree with you that poison is a cruel method. There is no way to control the outcome. What if a cat eats just a bit of the sausage. Will it die slowly of the poison or just be very ill and much later die because of it.

Many animals that are not the intended target will also die. It is a solution that is going to cause more harm than the original problem.

I don't know how they can solve the feral cat problem. They do need to do something. Any solution needs to be humane and it should not put other wildlife at risk.

[LPC]

A cruel and morally repugnant "solution". As I have said on numerous previous threads: humans cause these environmental disasters, so they have a moral obligation to solve them, without causing yet more suffering and environmental problems.

Putting poison on a large scale into the countryside seems totally irresponsible. Many other forms of life could be affected, apart from the cats - by eating the dead bodies or ingesting the sausages directly.

The best solution would be to catch the cats and neuter them. They could then be released back to the wild and left to live out their brief lives in peace, without reproducing. The life expectancy of feral cats is not long:

"Without human assistance, feral kittens are expected to have a high death rate, with approximately 50% dying within the first year. Of cats who survive kittenhood, the average life span of a feral cat without human care is less than two years.....In Florida, a study of feral cats admitted to a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program concluded that "euthanasia for debilitated cats for humane reasons is rarely necessary"

- source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_cat

The usual excuses will be trotted out, of course - "It's too difficult to trap them....or too expensive to sterilise them". These are lame excuses. TNR has been done successfully worldwide; it just needs time and money.

Instead of devoting time and money, the authorities in Australia are seeking a "quick fix" with poisoned sausages. Money before morals seems to be their motto.

[Catherine]

Quote:Instead of devoting time and money, the authorities in Australia are seeking a "quick fix" with poisoned sausages. Money before morals seems to their motto.

This attitude seems to be true of all invasive species situations. We look for the quick solution no matter how morally repugnant it is. The slaughter of two million of any species is horrible. Their current plan is also dangerous. It will have long term negative consequences that could last for years.

The TNR, Trap, Neuter, Release program is not a quick fix, but it has proved successful as a long term solution.
They got serious about TNR in Toronto a number of years ago. Thousands of cats have been sterilized. That means thousands of kittens have not been born. I no longer see large colonies of cats behind the city owned apartment buildings.
I counted 40 cats in the parking lot behind one building. Now there are no strays. The colony was cared for until it died out.

It isn't easy, but TNR is more effect than a cull. When you cull cats, they just produce more cats to make up for losses.
With TNR the sterilized cats are still there taking up resources, but they are unable to produce more cats.

TNR would be a big undertaking for Australia, but it would be an effective solution. It would take a few years to really feel the results, but there would be steady improvement. Maybe they could call for teams for various animal groups to help with the project. Winter would be a good time to start. If a significant number of cats were sterilized this winter there would be a drop in the number of kittens born next summer.

The government could pay people to help with the problem. They could pay teams of vets and their staff to do the actual sterilizations. Maybe veterinary students could get involved. Many of them could do a simple sterilization.
I think TNR teams from other countries would help if they did a massive TNR campaign.

All that is needed is the will to choose a humane solution. This particular humane solution is also the most effective.

[LPC]

Indeed. To quote the Wikipedia article I cited previously:

"In 2011, an Australian study emphasised the need to monitor the effects of culling programs after infrared cameras found that the culling of feral cats led to an increase in feral cat populations in the culled areas. It was thought that only dominant cats were being baited and trapped during such operations. After the removal of dominant cats, there was an influx of subordinate animals to the area which unlike the dominant cats, did not venture into the traps. Within a year cat numbers in culled areas stabilised to original numbers."

So TNR seems to be the best solution to the feral cat problem.

[Catherine]

I have heard that culling does not reduce the numbers of feral cats. Toronto went with the TNR method and it is paying off. Our feral cat population is decreasing.

It will be a much bigger problem to take care of the 2 million feral cats that Australia has, but at least they should try a method that has been shown to work. We already know that killing the cats won't decrease the  population. TNR isn't as fast, but it is effective and humane.