Wheatbelt NRM supported 7 community members to attend the WA Feral Cat Symposium in Mandurah on 31 May 2018. Participants heard from some of the nation’s leading researchers, conservation groups, and government representatives on the innovative future of feral cat control and local success stories in tackling a major cause of decline for many of Australia’s endangered species. The successful recipients of the Wheatbelt NRM subsidy were:

•    Brian Foley
•    Peter Smith
•    Amanda Lee
•    Lucy Honan
•    Robert and Beth Boase
•    Elizabeth Manning

“John Woinaski from the Threatened Species Hub outlined a number crunching exercise carried out to quantify the damage to native fauna caused by feral cats.  Collating numbers from researchers around Australia he estimates feral cat numbers range from 1.5million to 5.5million depending on seasonal fluctuations. This in not including the approx. 4 million domestic cats.  The ferals alone are estimated to consume an average of 5 native animals per night equating to from 7 million to 22 million mammals, birds and reptiles and frogs EVERY DAY!!  “

-    Peter Smith

“Some new traps and baits were talked about including a grooming trap, a sophisticated instrument that detects cats and sprays them with a substance that is later licked in grooming, proving fatal.”

-    Lucy Honan