As we are all well aware, thanks to the ABC documentary The Ferals and later Feral TV, Australia has an abundance of feral fauna.
And now Brigitte Bardot who, in other news, is still alive, has penned a letter to our Environment Minister regarding our chats sauvages:
Since Hunt has taken the EM position there has been resurgence in cockney rhyming slang and a renewed commitment to the Action Plan for Australian Mammals.
The report found that: 29 Aussie mammals are now extinct, we apparently have the highest mammal extinction rate in the world, there are a further 63 mammals are listed as threatened and feral cats are a major threat to our mammal fauna. Or, to put it more aggressively, in the words of Greg Hunt: “They are tsunamis of violence and death for Australia’s native species.”
The Threat Abatement Plan for Predation by Feral Cats states that: “Convincing evidence that feral cats exert a significant effect on native wildlife on the mainland or Tasmania is scarce.”
Animals Australia is not convinced that culling is the best response, with Communications Director Lisa Chalk having said of the situation: “It’s worth noting that the primary and most significant threat to the continued existence of Australia’s native species is the destruction of their habitat and food sources.”
Both The Conversation and ABC FactCheck have written at length about how the number of feral cats in Australia is unverifiable, that any kind of action plan would hinge on gauging those numbers and that there are alternatives to a straight up cull. (See: ‘To eradicate feral cats, we need to know how many are out there,’ ‘Are feral cats killing over 20 billion native animals a year?‘ and ‘Feral feast: cats kill hundreds of Australian animals‘). Still, Hunt is pressing on with his a 10-year plan to eradicate “all of the significant populations of feral cats around Australia”.
