Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer by Peter P. Marra & Chris Santella

Author:Peter P. Marra & Chris Santella [Marra, Peter P. & Santella, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Natural History, nature, Animals, birds, Mammals, Ecosystems & Habitats, General, Life Sciences, Zoology, ornithology, Pets, Cats
ISBN: 9781400882878
Google: 7TD9CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2016-08-29T20:36:31+00:00

In Australia a very different ethos is guiding free-range cat management strategies, as government officials rally to save a host of endangered endemic species from extinction.

Domestic cats arrived on the Australian Continent with European visitors, perhaps as early as the seventeenth century (with shipwrecked Dutch sailors) and most certainly by the late eighteenth century when the English began their colonization efforts. (Australia, like Antarctica, does not have any native members of the cat family, Felidae.) By the mid-nineteenth century, feral cat colonies were well established throughout most of the continent, with the exception of wetland rain forests and some offshore islands. Additional cats were intentionally introduced on the continent in the late 1800s in hopes of reducing populations of nonnative rabbits, rats, and mice.

Cats, as has been noted, are highly effective predators, and in the course of several hundred years they have had a significant impact on Australia’s indigenous fauna and, ironically, no impact on its populations of nonnative rabbits, rats, and mice. In fact, a number of small mammals (the Australia Department of the Environment places the number at twenty-seven) and several species of ground-dwelling birds have gone extinct, thanks in large part to cat predation. Predation by foxes, another introduced species, has undoubtedly also contributed to the problem. “Many Australian mammals were easy prey for feral cats and foxes,” said Dr. John Woinarski, a professor at the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University, who has been involved in research, management, advocacy, and policy relating to biodiversity conservation, particularly in relation to threatened species. “Before their introduction, there were no comparable native predators. All the mammals that went extinct were small, shy, nocturnal creatures like the desert bandicoot, a small rodent-like animal that was distributed through central Australia’s arid regions. People didn’t really appreciate them, as they weren’t very aware of them. It didn’t help that these animals had low reproductive rates.”8

The connection between feral cats and these Aussie extinctions has been made most forcefully by Dr. John Wamsley, known in some circles as the “cat hat man.” Beginning in the early 1970s, Wamsley would show up at public events wearing a hat fashioned from the pelt of a feral cat and fronted by the animal’s face. He recalled in a 2005 interview that some animal liberationists had pointed out that it was illegal for him to do anything about the feral cats that were destroying wildlife on his land, and they would take action against him if he did so—so he had to change the law. His cat hat statement certainly attracted attention; in the same interview, he recalled, “I knew exactly what newspapers had reported it, by where the death threats were coming from.”9

“Wamsley is a bit of a crank in some ways, but he’s certainly charismatic,” Woinarski said. And Wamsley’s commitment, Woinarski acknowledged, has gone beyond controversial headgear. “He built some enclosures designed to keep cats and foxes out so native animals could live without these invasive predators. These experiments in creating a cat-free environment showed that the native animals could thrive without predators.

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