Cats carry diseases that can be deadly to humans, and it’s costing Australia $6 billion every year

Sarah Legge, Australian National University; Chris Dickman, University of Sydney; Jaana Dielenberg, The University of Queensland; John Read; John Woinarski, Charles Darwin University; Pat Taggart, and Tida Nou, The University of Queensland

Toxoplasmosis, cat roundworm and cat scratch disease are caused by pathogens that depend on cats — pets or feral — for part of their life cycle. But these diseases can be passed to humans, sometimes with severe health consequences.

In our study published today in the journal Wildlife Research, we looked at the rates of these diseases in Australia, their health effects, and the costs to our economy.

Professor Sarah Legge discusses the key findings of the study.

Based on findings from a large number of Australian and international studies, Australian hospital data and information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we estimate many thousands of people in Australia fall ill or sustain a minor injury as a result of cat-dependent diseases each year.

Our estimations suggest more than 8,500 Australians are hospitalised and about 550 die annually from causes linked to these diseases.

We calculated the economic cost of these pathogens in Australia at more than A$6 billion per year based on the costs of medical care for affected people, lost income from time off work, and other related expenses.

Toxoplasmosis

Toxoplasmosis is an illness caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. It’s the most serious cat-dependent disease.

Newly infected cats shed millions of T. gondii oocysts (like tiny eggs) in their poo and these can survive many months in the environment.

Humans become infected when they ingest these oocysts, which are in the soil and dust in places where cats have defecated, especially sandpits, vegetable gardens or kitty litter.

Humans can also become infected from eating undercooked meat, if those farm animals have come into contact with cat-shed oocysts.

Up to one-third of people globally are infected with T. gondii, most without knowing it. Australian studies have reported infection rates between 22% and 66%.

Once infected, about 10% of people develop illness; the other 90% have no symptoms.

Based on overall infection rates and Australia’s population size, we estimate there are more than 125,000 new infections in Australia each year.

Of these, around 12,500 people get sick, mostly with non-specific, flu-like symptoms that resolve within a couple of weeks; 650 require hospitalisation, and 50 die, with these more serious cases often experiencing brain swelling and neurological symptoms.

People with compromised immune systems, such as those with cancer or HIV, are at highest risk.

The parasite _Toxoplasma gondii_ — Toxoplasmosis is caused by the parasite *Toxoplasma gondii*.
Yale Rosen/Flickr

Pregnant women who become infected for the first time can miscarry, or their babies may be born with congenital deformities.

Based on reported and estimated T. gondii infection rates in newborns, about 240 infected babies are born in Australia each year.

More than 20%, or about 50 of these babies, will have symptoms that require life-long care, including impaired vision or hearing, and intellectual disabilities. Another 90 babies will develop symptoms, usually related to vision or hearing, later in life.

A woman holds her pregnant belly. — Toxoplasmosis carries unique risks for pregnant women.
Freestocks/Unsplash

Long-term impacts of latent infection

Even if the initial infection causes little illness, the T. gondii parasite stays with us for life, encased in a cyst, often in the brain. These “latent” infections may affect our mental health and behaviour, such as delaying our reaction times.

Many studies have found people with T. gondii infection are more likely to have a car accident. A review of several studies found if there were no T. gondii infections, car accident rates would theoretically be 17% lower.

T. gondii infections also appear more common in people with mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, and in people who attempt suicide. Reviews across many studies suggest that without T. gondii infections, there could be 10% fewer suicides and 21% fewer schizophrenia diagnoses.

There’s still debate over whether the parasite causes car accidents and mental health disorders, or whether the association is explained by another shared factor. But it is possible T. gondii infection is a risk factor for these issues, in the same way smoking is a risk factor for heart attacks.

Scientists are still discovering how T. gondii influences the brain, but studies on rodents suggest it may involve changed brain chemistry or inflammation.

Putting it all together

If we accept T. gondii infections do increase the risk of car accidents, suicides and schizophrenia, then considering the incidence of these accidents and health issues in Australia, without T. gondii, we estimate we could potentially avoid:

200 deaths and 6,500 hospitalisations due to car accidents
300 suicides and 4,500 suicide attempts
800 schizophrenia diagnoses each year.

Combining deaths from car accidents and suicide with the 50 deaths from acute toxoplasmosis, we reach a total of 550 deaths related to T. gondii infection per year.

The hospitalisation total for T. gondii includes 650 for acute toxoplasmosis, 50 for congenitally infected babies, 6,500 for car accidents, and 800 for schizophrenia. We didn’t include hospitalisations for suicide attempts, as we didn’t have statistics on that. So this could be a conservative estimate, notwithstanding the fact there are other factors involved in car accidents and mental health issues.

Cat scratch and roundworm

Cat scratch disease is a bacterial infection (Bartonella henselae) that people can contract if bitten or scratched by an infected cat.

Typical symptoms include sores, fevers, aches and swollen glands. But more serious symptoms, such as inflammation of heart tissue, cysts in the organs and loss of vision, can also occur.

Prevalence figures are not available in Australia, but based on rates in the United States and Europe, where cat ownership patterns and cat infection rates are similar, we estimate at least 2,700 Australians get sick annually from cat scratch disease, and 270 are hospitalised.

Cat roundworm is a parasitic infection (Toxocara cati) that people and other animals can contract by accidentally consuming the parasite’s egg, which infected cats shed in their poo.

Most cat roundworm infections cause mild symptoms, but the migration of the larvae through the body can cause tissue damage, which can be serious if it occurs in a place like the eye or heart.

An adult cat round worm.
Beentree/Wikimedia commons, CC BY

What can we do?

Some 700,000 feral cats and another 2.7 million pet cats roam our towns and suburbs acting as reservoirs of these diseases.

There are no human vaccines for these diseases. Treatment for T. gondii infection in cats isn’t considered useful because cats usually shed the oocysts without the owner even realising the cat has the parasite. Cats can be treated to rid them of roundworm, but treatment for B. henselae (the bacteria that causes cat scratch) may not be effective.

But if you’re a cat owner, there are some things you can do. Keeping pet cats indoors or in a securely contained outdoor area could reduce the chance your pet will contract or pass on a disease-causing pathogen.

A cat sits on the windowsill, looking out onto the street. — If cats are always kept indoors they have a low risk of catching and spreading the disease.
Jaana Dielenberg, Author provided

Cats should be kept out of veggie gardens and children’s sandpits. Washing hands after handling kitty litter and gardening, and washing vegetables thoroughly, can also reduce the risk of transmission.

As T. gondii can be contracted from infected meat, cooking meat well before eating, and not feeding raw meat to pets, can also help.

The urban feral cat resevoir could be reduced by preventing access to food sources such as farm sites, rubbish bins and tips. We could do this with improved waste management and fencing.

People shouldn’t feed feral cats, as this can lead to cat colony formation, where infection rates are also higher.

Pet cats should also be desexed to prevent unwanted litters that end up as free-roaming ferals.

These steps would cost us and our pet cats little, but could prevent unnecessary impacts on our health and well-being.

Sarah Legge, Professor, Australian National University; Chris Dickman, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, University of Sydney; Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow, Charles Darwin University. Science Communication Manager, The University of Queensland; John Read, Associate Lecturer, Ecology and Environmental Sciences; John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University; Pat Taggart, Adjunct Fellow, and Tida Nou, Project officer, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cats wreak havoc on native wildlife, but we’ve found one adorable species outsmarting them

Euan Ritchie, Deakin University; Amy Coetsee, University of Melbourne; Anthony Rendall, Deakin University; Tim Doherty, University of Sydney, and Vivianna Miritis, University of Sydney

Feral and pet cats are responsible for a huge part of Australia’s shameful mammal extinction record. Small and medium-sized ground-dwelling mammals are most susceptible.

But we’ve found one mammal in particular that can outsmart cats and live alongside them: the long-nosed potoroo.

These miniature kangaroo-like marsupials are officially listed as vulnerable. And after the recent devastating fires, extensive swathes of their habitat in southeastern Australia were severely burnt, leaving them more exposed to predators such as foxes and cats. But the true extent of the impact on their numbers remains unclear.

Amid the devastation, our new study is reason to be optimistic.

Long-nosed potoroos are a bit like mini kangaroos, but spend much of their time digging for fungi.
Zoos Victoria

Using motion-sensing camera traps on the wildlife haven of French Island – which is free of foxes, but not cats – we found potoroos may have developed strategies to avoid prowling cats, such as hiding in dense vegetation.

If these long-nosed potoroos can co-exist with one of the world’s most deadly predators, then it’s time we rethink our conservation strategies.

Surviving cats with a deadly game of hide and seek

We conservatively estimated that between five and 14 cats lived in our study area (but it takes only one cat to eradicate a population of native animals).

Although cats were common here, we detected them less often in areas of dense vegetation. By contrast, this was where we found potoroos more often.

French Island’s thick vegetation provides potoroos with critical refuge to evade feral cats.
Vivianna Miritis

Long-nosed potoroos are nocturnal foragers that mainly, but not exclusively, feed in more open habitat before sheltering in dense vegetation during the day. But we found potoroos rarely ventured out of their thick vegetation shelter.

This may be because they’re trading off potentially higher quality foraging habitat in more open areas against higher predation risk. In other words, it appears they’ve effectively learnt to hide from the cats.

Another intriguing result from our study was that although potoroos and feral cats shared more than half of their activity time, the times of peak activity for each species differed.

Cats were active earlier in the night, while potoroo activity peaked three to four hours later. This might be another potoroo strategy to avoid becoming a cat’s evening meal.

Temporal activity of cats and long-nosed potoroos for winter and summer, on French Island, Victoria. Their overlap is represented by the area shaded in grey. Modified from Miritis et al. (2020).

Still, completely avoiding cats isn’t possible. Our study site was in the national park on French Island, and it’s likely cats saturate this remnant patch of long-nosed potoroo habitat.

It’s also possible cats may be actively searching for potoroos as prey, and indeed some of our camera images showed cats carrying young long-nosed potoroos in their mouths. These potoroos were more likely killed by these cats, rather than scavenged.

Cats are expert hunters

Cats are exceedingly difficult to manage effectively. They’re adaptable, elusive and have a preference for live prey.

The two most common management practices for feral cats are lethal control and exclusion fencing. Lethal control needs to be intensive and conducted over large areas to benefit threatened species.

And outside of predator-free sanctuaries, it must be ongoing. If control stops, cats can reinvade from surrounding areas.

“Safe havens” – created through the use of exclusion fencing or predator-free islands – can overcome some of these challenges. But while exclusion fencing is highly effective, it can create other bad outcomes, including an over-abundance of herbivores, leading to excessive grazing of vegetation.

Camera traps can tell us a lot about how introduced predators and native wildlife interact.
Zoos Victoria and Deakin University

Fencing and islands can result in native animals rapidly losing their anti-predator behaviour. This can limit the success of reintroducing them to areas outside predator-free havens.

In any case, removing introduced predators might not be really necessary in places native species can co-exist. If long-nosed potoroos have learnt to live with feral cats, we should instead focus on how to maintain their survival strategies.

Why cat eradication isn’t always the best option

It’s clear cats are here to stay, so we shouldn’t simply fall back largely on predator eradication or predator-free havens as the only way to ensure our wildlife have a fighting chance at long-term survival.

Yes, for some species, it’s vital to keep feral predators away. But for others like long-nosed potoroos, conserving and creating suitable habitat and different vegetation densities may be the best way to keep them alive.

But perhaps most important is having predator-savvy insurance populations, such as long-nosed potoroos on French Island. This is incredibly valuable for one day moving them to other areas where predators – native or feral – are present, such as nearby Phillip Island.

In the absence of predators, native wildlife can rapidly lose their ability to recognise predator danger. Programs aimed at eradicating introduced predators where they’re co-existing with native species need to pay careful attention to this.

Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University; Amy Coetsee, Threatened Species Biologist, University of Melbourne; Anthony Rendall, Associate Lecturer in Conservation Biology, Deakin University; Tim Doherty, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney, and Vivianna Miritis, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One cat, one year, 110 native animals: lock up your pet, it’s a killing machine

Jaana Dielenberg, The University of Queensland; Brett Murphy, Charles Darwin University; Chris Dickman, University of Sydney; John Woinarski, Charles Darwin University; Leigh-Ann Woolley, Charles Darwin University; Mike Calver, Murdoch University, and Sarah Legge, Australian National University

We know feral cats are an enormous problem for wildlife – across Australia, feral cats collectively kill more than three billion animals per year.

Cats have played a leading role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions since 1788, and are a big reason populations of at least 123 other threatened native species are dropping.

But pet cats are wreaking havoc too. Our new analysis compiles the results of 66 different studies on pet cats to gauge the impact of Australia’s pet cat population on the country’s wildlife.

The results are staggering. On average, each roaming pet cat kills 186 reptiles, birds and mammals per year, most of them native to Australia. Collectively, that’s 4,440 to 8,100 animals per square kilometre per year for the area inhabited by pet cats.

More than one-quarter of Aussie households have pet cats.
Jaana Dielenberg, Author provided

If you own a cat and want to protect wildlife, you should keep it inside. In Australia, 1.1 million pet cats are contained 24 hours a day by responsible pet owners. The remaining 2.7 million pet cats – 71% of all pet cats – are able to roam and hunt.

What’s more, your pet cat could be getting out without you knowing. A radio tracking study in Adelaide found that of the 177 cats whom owners believed were inside at night, 69 cats (39%) were sneaking out for nocturnal adventures.

Surely not my cat

Just over one-quarter of Australian households (27%) have pet cats, and about half of cat-owning households have two or more cats.

Many owners believe their animals don’t hunt because they never come across evidence of killed animals.

But studies that used cat video tracking collars or scat analysis (checking what’s in the cat’s poo) have established many pet cats kill animals without bringing them home. On average, pet cats bring home only 15% of their prey.

Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 390 million animals per year in Australia.

This huge number may lead some pet owners to think the contribution of their own cat wouldn’t make much difference. However, we found even single pet cats have driven declines and complete losses of populations of some native animal species in their area.

Documented cases have included: a feather-tailed glider population in south eastern NSW; a skink population in a Perth suburb; and an olive legless lizard population in Canberra.

Urban cats

On average, an individual feral cat in the bush kills 748 reptiles, birds and mammals a year – four times the toll of a hunting pet cat. But feral cats and pet cats roam over very different areas.

Pet cats are confined to cities and towns, where you’ll find 40 to 70 roaming cats per square kilometre. In the bush there’s only one feral cat for every three to four square kilometres.

So while each pet cat kills fewer animals than a feral cat, their high urban density means the toll is still very high. Per square kilometre per year, pet cats kill 30-50 times more animals than feral cats in the bush.

The impact of roaming pet cats on Australian wildlife.

Most of us want to see native wildlife around towns and cities. But such a vision is being compromised by this extraordinary level of predation, especially as the human population grows and our cities expand.

Many native animals don’t have high reproductive rates so they cannot survive this level of predation. The stakes are especially high for threatened wildlife in urban areas.

Pet cats living near areas with nature also hunt more, reducing the value of places that should be safe havens for wildlife.

The 186 animals each pet cat kills per year on average is made up of 110 native animals (40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals).

For example, the critically endangered western ringtail possum is found in suburban areas of Mandurah, Bunbury, Busselton and Albany. The possum did not move into these areas – rather, we moved into their habitat.

What can pet owners do?

Keeping your cat securely contained 24 hours a day is the only way to prevent it from killing wildlife.

It’s a myth that a good diet or feeding a cat more meat will prevent hunting: even cats that aren’t hungry will hunt.

A bell on a cat’s collar doesn’t stop hunting, it only makes hunting a little harder.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Various devices, such as bells on collars, are commercially marketed with the promise of preventing hunting. While some of these items may reduce the rate of successful kills, they don’t prevent hunting altogether.

And they don’t prevent cats from disturbing wildlife. When cats prowl and hunt in an area, wildlife have to spend more time hiding or escaping. This reduces the time spent feeding themselves or their young, or resting.

In Mandurah, WA, the disturbance and hunting of just one pet cat and one stray cat caused the total breeding failure of a colony of more than 100 pairs of fairy terns.

Benefits of a life indoors

Keeping cats indoors protects pet cats from injury, avoids nuisance behaviour and prevents unwanted breeding.

Cats allowed outside often get into fights with other cats, even when they’re not the fighting type (they can be attacked by other cats when running away).

Two cats in Western Australia stopped fairy terns from breeding.
Shutterstock

Roaming cats are also very prone to getting hit by a vehicle. According to the Humane Society of the United States, indoor cats live up to four times longer than those allowed to roam freely.

Indoor cats have lower rates of cat-borne diseases, some of which can infect humans. For example, in humans the cat-borne disease toxoplasmosis can cause illness, miscarriages and birth defects.

But Australia is in a very good position to make change. Compared to many other countries, the Australian public are more aware of how cats threaten native wildlife and more supportive of actions to reduce those impacts.

It won’t be easy. But since more than one million pet cats are already being contained, reducing the impacts from pet cats is clearly possible if we take responsibility for them.

Jaana Dielenberg, Science Communication Manager, The University of Queensland; Brett Murphy, Associate Professor / ARC Future Fellow, Charles Darwin University; Chris Dickman, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, University of Sydney; John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University; Leigh-Ann Woolley, Adjunct Research Associate, Charles Darwin University; Mike Calver, Associate Professor in Biological Sciences, Murdoch University, and Sarah Legge, Professor, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why Australia needs to kill cats

John Read, University of Adelaide and Katherine Moseby, UNSW

Introduced cats are a key threat to 123 of Australia’s threatened species.

The management of cats is challenging and divisive; many options such as rehoming, trap-neuter-release and euthanasia have been used around the world with varying success.

Australia’s recent commitment to killing 2 million feral cats to protect its native wildlife has attracted international attention and some have considered the project harsh.

While the actual target of 2 million has been rightly criticised as arbitrary and more based on public relations than rigorous science, it’s true non-lethal methods are not enough to stem the environmental havoc cats cause. Particularly in light of a UN report highlighting the world’s extinction crisis, Australia urgently needs well-targeted cat culls.

Non-lethal methods

A range of effective non-lethal methods are already protecting wildlife from cats. Cat-exclusion fences have collectively improved the conservation status of many threatened species. In addition, an increasing number of Australian councils have created progressive cat management bylaws designed to protect pet cats, wildlife and humans from the effects of free-ranging cats.

The centrepiece of many of these bylaws, supported by the vast majority of animal welfare groups, is the containment of pet cats on their owner’s property. Indoor cats live longer, safer lives than cats that are allowed to roam.

Stray cats are harder to manage. These are the cats that do not have a home, but may be directly or indirectly fed by people.

Because they are unowned, no-one is officially accountable for their health or welfare. Groups of like-minded individuals feed and even provide veterinary assistance to some of these cats, further blurring the distinction between pet and feral cats.

A trend promoted by “no kill” shelters and advocacy groups in some US states and Europe is for clowders (groups) of stray cats to be desexed, vaccinated and released back onto the streets. This process is called trap-neuter-release (TNR).

A recent RSPCA best-practice cat management discussion paper proposed a trial of TNR in Australia too – but there are very good reasons why this would be counterproductive for cat welfare.

The risks of releasing unowned cats

Informed animal welfare advocate groups, including PETA, strongly condemn the release of unowned cats, neutered or otherwise, due to the welfare risks to these cats. Human health professionals and wildlife advocates also oppose maintaining groups of cats.

Dense outdoor cat clowders are hotbeds of toxoplasmosis infections. This cat-borne disease is increasingly being linked to a range of chronic mental health conditions including schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

“No kill” groups that promote TNR erroneously claim that neutered cats significantly reduce the breeding potential of erroneously named cat “colonies”, in the same way that release of neutered mosquitoes is a proven technique for controlling disease-bearing mosquitoes.

One of us (John) has recently written a book on protecting wildlife and cats that suggests five fatal biological flaws in this logic:

Neutering mosquitoes works because impotent individuals “swamp” short-lived wild insect populations that mate only once. By contrast, female cats typically mate repeatedly when on heat, so an encounter with a neutered tom is of little consequence.
Unlike lions, domestic cats evolved as solitary hunters. While domestic cats can tolerate living in high-density clowders, they do not form hierarchical colonies, packs or prides where alpha individuals restrict the feeding, breeding or survival of subordinate animals.
Although loud cat fights might make you assume males fight over the right to exclusively mate with a female, most litters of outdoor cats are sired by multiple males. Even supposedly “dominant” males seldom intervene when another male courts a female. Neutered male cats will not protect females in their clowder from non-desexed interlopers. This means that more than 90% of cats need to be neutered to restrict population increases, an incredibly challenging proposition.
Despite the misleading label “colony”, cat clowders are not closed populations. Rather, cats typically move around to take advantage of abundant food resources. And unwanted pets are often dumped at clowder sites. The failures of several well-studied TNR programs are attributed to cats migrating or being dumped at these sites.
Despite needing repeated vaccinations to protect them from debilitating diseases, few stray cats can be captured a second time. And many can never be captured at all. This leaves them and their clowder effectively unmanageable.

TNR is biologically flawed, cruel to cats – because it returns them to a hazardous environment – and ineffective when not accompanied by high levels of adoption.

Harming marine ecosystems

Not only do predatory cats harm native wildlife, but stray or feral clowders can also directly influence marine ecosystems and fisheries.

Many commercial cat foods contain increasingly threatened predatory fish that are high in the food chain and hence use more nutrients and biological energy than plants or herbivores. US dogs and cats consume one-third of the animal-derived protein eaten by humans, with accompanying greenhouse gas emissions.

The cat food provided to stray clowders adds to this biological expense. In 2009 alone, the US-based Best Friends Animal Society, one of the major promoters of TNR, distributed over 80,000 tonnes of cat food to unowned cats. There are no similar studies in Australia, and we appear to have far lower rates of stray-cat-feeding, but it is still part of the ecological impact of stray cats.

Even more insidiously, seals, otters and dolphins in oceans around the world die from cat-borne diseases spread mainly from clowders.

Humane euthanasia

Fortunately, both science and animal welfare standards are consistent about management of cats. All healthy domestic cats for which safe homes can be found should be adopted or rehomed, then kept indoors following neutering and vaccination. All other cats, including ferals and strays that cannot be rehomed quickly, should be humanely euthanased.

Feeding or releasing cats (neutered or otherwise) threatens our wildlife and perpetuates the cycle of suffering, disease, predation and social annoyance. Non-lethal options such as feral cat-proof fencing can still be part of the solution, but euthanasia remains an important part of controlling feral and stray cats to protect our native wildlife.

Among the Pigeons: Why our cats belong indoors (2019) by John Read is published by Wakefield Press.

John Read, Associate Lecturer, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Katherine Moseby, Research fellow, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Like cats and dogs: dingoes can keep feral cats in check

File 20190403 177175 6uzk99.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Feral cats are linked to the extinction of at least 20 Australian mammals.
Shutterstock

Mike Letnic, UNSW and Ben Feit

The role of dingoes in the Australian landscape is highly debated between ecologists, conservationists and graziers. They kill livestock, but also hunt introduced animals and keep kangaroo populations in check.

Now new research sheds more light on the benefits dingoes bring to the outback. For the first time, our research clearly shows that dingoes suppress feral cat numbers.

Our research, published recently in Ecosystems, used the world’s largest fence to compare essentially identical environments with and without dingoes. Over the course of the six-year study, dingoes drove down cat numbers – and kept them down.

Feral cats are out of control

Feral cats are a serious conservation threat. They have been linked to the extinction of at least 20 mammal species in Australia and threaten the ongoing survival of more than 100 native species.

For our study, we asked whether “top-down” pressure from dingoes (through direct killing and competition for food) had a greater influence on controlling cat numbers than “bottom-up” effects (the availability of shared food sources preyed on by cats).

Dingoes drive down the population of introduced animals.
Kim/flickr, CC BY-SA

We conducted our study by comparing the numbers of dingoes, cats and their major prey species on either side of the dingo fence in the Strzelecki Desert. The fence runs along the borders of New South Wales and South Australia and was originally built to exclude dingoes from sheep grazing lands in NSW.

The state border follows the longitude line 141 east, so the fence does not demarcate any natural boundary. It simply cuts a straight line through sand dunes with similar landforms and vegetation on either side. Thus the dingo fence provides a unique opportunity to study apex predators’ effects on ecosystems: dingoes are common on the SA side, “outside” the fence, whereas on the NSW “inside” of the fence, dingoes are rare due to intensive persecution by humans.

We collected data from sites on either side of the fence in the Strzelecki Desert, at roughly four-month intervals between 2011 and 2017. Dingo and cat scat was collected at each site, to analyse and compare diets, and spotlight searches were used to record numbers of dingoes, feral cats, as well as two of their common shared food sources: rabbits and hopping mice.

Spotlight surveys revealed dingoes to be virtually absent from study areas inside the fence, with only four dingoes recorded during the study. Where dingoes were rare inside the fence, cat numbers closely followed fluctuations of their prey species consistently over the six-year span of our study. As prey numbers increased, cat numbers also increased, and similarly as prey numbers declined, cat numbers also declined.

A feral cat in outback Australia.
Shutterstock

Outside the fence, where dingoes were common, it was quite a different story. There, cat numbers were consistently lower, with numbers of both cats and dingoes following fluctuations in prey numbers across the first two years of the study. However, from 2013 onward, dingo numbers remained high and matched trends in their prey numbers for the remainder of the study.

During this time, cat numbers remained low, and by the end of 2015, cats had virtually disappeared from our study sites outside the fence and were not recorded during spotlight surveys between November 2015 and the end of our study in July 2017.

The most likely explanation for this drastic reduction in cat populations is through interference competition – either by dingoes killing some cats or by scaring others away from habitats in which they would usually hunt. Indeed, we occasionally found cat remains in dingo scats, which suggests dingoes prey on cats.

Although our scat analyses indicated that dingoes and cats eat similar foods, there was no evidence that competition for food was a major factor in how dingoes reduce cat populations. This is because prey were plentiful outside the fence, where dingoes were common and cats were rare.

This research show how dingoes can help conservation efforts by suppressing feral cat populations. It adds to previous work showing dingoes are important in maintaining healthy ecosystems, as they reduce and eradicate feral herbivores like pigs and goats, and stop kangaroos from overpopulating districts.

This article was updated on April 5 to credit Ben Feit as a co-author.

Mike Letnic, Professor, Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW and Ben Feit, Post-doctoral researcher

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tassie devils’ decline has left a feast of carrion for feral cats

File 20181127 76737 frgu15.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Healthy Tasmanian devil populations have cornered the market on carrion.
Menna Elizabeth Jones, Author provided

Calum Cunningham, University of Tasmania; Christopher Johnson, University of Tasmania; Menna Elizabeth Jones, University of Tasmania, and Tracey Hollings, University of Melbourne

The decline of Tasmanian devils is having an unusual knock-on effect: animal carcasses would once have been gobbled up in short order by devils are now taking many days longer to disappear.

We made the discovery, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by placing carcasses in a range of locations and watching what happened. We found that reduced scavenging by devils results in extra food for less efficient scavengers, such as feral cats.

Tasmanian devils have struggled for two decades against a typically fatal transmissible cancer, called devil facial tumour disease. The disease has caused devil populations to plummet by about 80% on average, and by up to 95% in some areas.

DFTD has spread across most of Tasmania over a 20-year period. Dashed lines show the estimated disease front.
Calum Cunningham/Menna Jones

Scavengers are carnivores that feed on dead animals (carrion). Almost all carnivores scavenge to a greater or lesser degree, but the devil is Tasmania’s dominant scavenger. Since the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger, it is also the island’s top predator.

A scavenging experiment

In our study, we put out carcasses of the Tasmanian pademelon (a small wallaby weighing roughly 5kg) in a variety of places, ranging from disease-free areas with large devil populations, to long-diseased areas where devil numbers are very low. We then used motion-sensor cameras to record all scavenger species that fed on the carcasses.

The Carnivores of Tasmania: a Scavenging Experiment.

Unsurprisingly, much less carrion was consumed by devils in areas where devil populations have declined. This has increased the availability of carrion for other species, such as the invasive feral cat, spotted-tailed quoll, and forest raven. All of these species significantly increased their scavenging in places with fewer devils.

Consumption of experimentally placed carcasses.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B

The responses of native scavengers (quolls and ravens) were subtly different to those of feral cats. The amount of feeding by quolls and ravens depended simply on how much of each carcass had already been consumed by devils. Ravens and quolls are smaller and less efficient than devils at consuming carcasses, so they get the chance to feed only when devils have not already monopolised a carcass.

In contrast, feral cats tended to scavenge only at sites where devils were at very low abundance. This suggests that healthy devil populations create a “landscape of fear” that causes cats to avoid carcasses altogether in areas where they are likely to encounter a devil. It seems that the life of a feral cat is now less scary in the absence of devils.

Predator prevalence

By looking at 20 years of bird surveys from BirdLife Australia, we also found that the odds of encountering a raven in Tasmania have more than doubled from 1998 to 2017. However, we were unable to directly link this with devil declines. It is likely the raven population is growing in response to a range of factors that includes land-use change and agricultural intensification, as well as reduced competition with devils.

Other studies have shown that cats have also become more abundant in areas where devils have declined. This highlights the potential for devils to act as a natural biological control on cats. Cats are a major threat to small native animals and are implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions.

Carcass concerns

Although smaller scavengers consumed more carrion as devils declined, they were unable to consume them as rapidly as devils. This has resulted in the accumulation of carcasses that would previously have been quickly and completely eaten by devils.

In places with plenty of devils, carcasses were completely eaten within an average of five days, compared with 13 days in places where devil facial tumour disease is rife. That means carcasses last much longer where devils are rare.

Around 2 million medium-sized animals are killed by vehicles or culled in Tasmania each year, and most are simply left to decompose where they fall. With devils consuming much less carrion, it is likely that carcasses are accumulating across Tasmania. It is unclear how much of a disease risk they pose to wildlife and livestock.

Conserving carnivores

Large carnivores are declining throughout the world, with knock-on effects such as increasing abundance of smaller predators. In recent years, some large carnivores have begun returning to their former ranges, bringing hope that their lost ecological roles may be restored.

Carnivores are declining for many reasons, but an underlying cause is that humans do not necessarily appreciate their pivotal role in the health of entire ecosystems. One way to change this is to recognise the beneficial services they provide.

Our research highlights one of these benefits. It supports arguments that we should help the devil population recover, not just for their own sake but for other species too, including those threatened by feral cats.

The devil seems to be solving the disease problem itself, rapidly evolving resistance to facial tumours. Any management plan will need to help this process, and not hinder it. Potentially, returning devils to mainland Australia could provide similar benefit to wildlife threatened by feral predators.

Calum Cunningham, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania, University of Tasmania; Christopher Johnson, Professor of Wildlife Conservation and ARC Australian Professorial Fellow, University of Tasmania; Menna Elizabeth Jones, Associate professor, University of Tasmania, and Tracey Hollings, Senior Scientist, Ecological Modelling at Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A hidden toll: Australia’s cats kill almost 650 million reptiles a year

File 20180625 152146 10y0h61.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — A feral cat snapped by a remote camera in the wild.
NT government, Author provided

John Woinarski, Charles Darwin University; Brett Murphy, Charles Darwin University; Chris Dickman, University of Sydney; Sarah Legge, Australian National University, and Tim Doherty, Deakin University

Cats take a hefty toll on Australia’s reptiles – killing an estimated 649 million of them every year, including threatened species – according to our new research published in the journal Wildlife Research.

This follows the earlier discovery that cats take a similarly huge chunk out of Australian bird populations. As we reported last year, more than a million Australian birds are killed by cats every day. Since their introduction to Australia, cats have also driven many native mammal species extinct.

We collated information from about 100 previous local studies of cats’ diets across Australia. These studies involved teasing apart the contents of more than 10,000 samples of faeces or stomachs from cats collected as part of management programs.

We tallied the number of reptiles found in these samples, and then scaled it up to Australia’s estimated cat population of between 2.1 million and 6.3 million. We also collated information from museums and wildlife shelters on the various animals that had been brought in after being killed or injured by cats.

We calculate that an average feral cat kills 225 reptiles per year, so the total feral cat population kills 596 million reptiles per year. This tally will vary significantly from year to year, because the cat population in inland Australia fluctuates widely between drought and rainy years.

On the hunt.
NT government, Author provided

We also estimated that the average pet cat kills 14 reptiles per year. That means that Australia’s 3.9 million pet cats kill 53 million reptiles in total each year. However, there is much less firm evidence to quantify the impact of pet cats, mainly because it is much more straightforward to catch and autopsy feral cats to see what they have been eating, compared with pet cats.

Binge eaters

According to our study, cats have been known to kill 258 different Australian reptiles (snakes, lizards and turtles – but not crocodiles!), including 11 threatened species.

The cat autopsies revealed that some cats binge on reptiles, with many cases of individual cats having killed and consumed more than 20 individual lizards within the previous 24 hours. One cat’s stomach was found to contain no less than 40 lizards.

Cat stomach contents, including several reptile parts.
Arid Recovery, Author provided

Such intensive predation probably puts severe pressure on local populations of some reptile species. There is now substantial evidence that cats are a primary cause of the ongoing decline of some threatened Australian reptile species, such as the Great Desert Skink.

By our estimate, the average Australian feral cat kills four times more lizards than the average free-roaming cat in the United States (which kills 59 individuals per year). But there are many more such cats in the US (between 30 million and 80 million), so the total toll on reptiles is likely similar.

The conservation of the Australian reptile fauna has been accorded lower public profile than that of many other groups. However, a recent international program has nearly completed an assessment of the conservation status of every one of Australia’s roughly 1,000 lizard and snake species.

Our research provides yet more evidence of the harm that cats are wreaking on Australia’s native wildlife. It underlines the need for more effective and strategic control of Australia’s feral cats, and for more responsible ownership of pet cats.

Pet cats that are allowed to roam will kill reptiles, birds and other small animals. Preventing pet cats from roaming will help the cats live longer and healthier lives – not to mention saving the lives of wildlife.

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Russell Palmer, Glenn Edwards, Alex Nankivell, John Read and Dani Stokeld to this research.

John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University; Brett Murphy, Senior Research Fellow, Charles Darwin University; Chris Dickman, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, University of Sydney; Sarah Legge, Associate Professor, Australian National University, and Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Cat plague is back after nearly 40 years in hiding – here’s what you need to know

File 20180206 14104 1hyhea9.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — No cases of feline parvovirus were reported from the 1980s until 2015.
Simone Dalmeri

Mark Westman, University of Sydney and Richard Malik, University of Sydney

A deadly feline disease is now spreading between cats after hiding in nature for nearly 40 years. Multiple cases of feline parvovirus, also known as cat plague, or panleukopenia, have been reported in stay kittens in the greater Melbourne area this week.

Feline parvovirus was a common disease in the 1960s and 1970s. Australia was one of the first countries to develop an effective vaccine. Once widespread vaccination became routine, the disease was pushed back into nature.

Most cases of parvovirus are in kittens and young cats.
Raphael Schaller

In the 1970s, cases were typically seen in unvaccinated kittens purchased from markets or pet stores, and in shelters where vaccination protocols were lax.

Between the early 1980s and 2015, cases were unreported, but no doubt feral and semi-owned cats were still sporadically infected.

The re-emergence first occurred in animal shelters in Mildura and Melbourne in 2016 and south-western Sydney in 2016. Many cats died. Even survivors suffered greatly. In all these outbreaks, affected cats had one thing in common – they had not been vaccinated.

What is feline parvovirus and how does it kill?

Feline parvovirus has a predilection for infecting rapidly dividing tissues. Cells lining the small intestine of infected cats are killed, resulting in vomiting, diarrhoea (often bloody), fever, lethargy, anorexia and sometimes sudden death.

The bone marrow is transiently wiped out by the virus, resulting in a depletion of white blood cells. As a result, infected cats are unable to fight the invasion by secondary bacteria that attack the leaky gut wall.

Most cases of feline parvovirus are in unvaccinated kittens or young cats. The welfare of cats is hugely impacted by this terrible disease – it makes cats miserable for many days, if they survive.

Treatment involves intensive therapy in hospital: intravenous fluids by infusion pump, medication to reduce vomiting, expensive anti-viral treatment (omega-interferon), opioids for pain relief, antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections, and occasionally blood or plasma transfusions and nutritional support (feeding tubes).

This eight-week-old kitten, Cola, wasn’t vaccinated and contracted feline parvovirus. She needed a transfusion and recovered from the infection.
David Hughes

Treatment can costs thousands of dollars, and many owners just can’t afford it. But even with treatment, the fatality rate remains high.

Feline parvovirus is spread by faeco-oral contamination: from infected cats shedding virus in their faeces. Litter trays and natural latrines (such as sandboxes) are prime sources of infection.

This may occur where infected cats are kept close to uninfected cats (in shelters and pounds), and in homes where cats have outdoor access. But you can track feline parvovirus into your house on your shoes or clothing, so even 100% indoor cats are not safe.

Feline parvovirus can usually be quickly diagnosed by veterinarians using rapid point-of-care test kits and then confirmed in a lab.

There is no risk of this virus spreading to human patients.

How did it re-emerge?

Feline parvovirus was never completely eliminated from the Australian cat population and instead has been maintained at low levels in the unowned and feral cat population for the past 40 years. Remember, there are perhaps six times as many unowned cats than owned cats in Australia!

This adaptable virus also has the potential to infect foxes and wild dogs, only later to be passed back to cats, providing a variety of potential environmental reservoirs.

Perhaps with an increased effort to rehabilitate and rehome “fringe dwelling cats”, it was inevitable that the virus would spill back from these unvaccinated cats into the general pet cat population, given waning herd immunity.

Consistent with this hypothesis is the first outbreak occurring in rural Mildura, a somewhat underprivileged socioeconomic area (government figures show the median household income is A$878 per week), and subject to incursions by feral cats, foxes and wild dogs – including dogs used for hunting.

Unvaccinated pet cats permitted the re-emergence of the virus.
David Vázquez

It is our suspicion that the cost of vaccinating the family cat (currently more than A$200 for a kitten requiring a course of two to three vaccines) exceeds the budget for many pet owners.

The best protection for any cat (and every cat) is widespread vaccination of as many cats as possible in the community at large. This “herd immunity” is the best protection against this highly contagious, persistent, resistant virus. When vaccination rates fall below 70%, cat populations are in trouble.

How do we protect pet cats?

Vaccination against feline parvovirus is highly effective (more than 99%) and is given by veterinarians as part of an F3 or F4 vaccine at the same time as a routine health check.

The Australian Veterinary Association recently recommended all cats be vaccinated annually. But with the modern range of vaccines, there is good evidence that in kittens older than 16 weeks, a single vaccination produces immunity which last several years

If a kitten has received two or three kitten vaccinations (the last one at 16-18 weeks of age), and a booster one year later, it likely has excellent protection against the virus, probably for several years, and possibly for life.

Is it time to vaccinate?
Krista Mangulsone

If your adult cat has received an annual vaccination in the past three years, it likely has excellent protection.

If your cat is more than three years overdue for its vaccination, it is sensible to visit your local veterinarian soon. Your cat will develop or maintain excellent protection within a few days of vaccination.

But what about unowned and feral cats?

We need to support efforts to vaccinate cats that have never been vaccinated against feline parvovirus – cats owned by people who are unable to afford vaccinations, and cats that have been dumped and are now unowned and free-roaming.

New South Wales is making some progress in this area. The NSW Cat Protection Society responded to a 2017 outbreak by subsidising free vaccinations for cat owners in Sydney. RSPCA NSW has ongoing targeted low-cost vaccination programs for cat owners, particularly in regional and remote areas of NSW.

Trap-neuter and return programs, while controversial, usually involve administering a F3/F4 vaccination to unowned and feral cats, thereby boosting herd immunity against feline parvovirus and also possibly reducing cat numbers.

Finally, for people who cannot afford veterinary care because of their life circumstances, Pets in the Park and similar charities can provide another option for vaccination.

Remember, the larger the proportion of the cat population that is vaccinated, the less chance any cat and every cat has of becoming infected. Stated another way, it’s far more effective to maximise the proportion of the cat population that is vaccinated, rather than over-vaccinating only a limited proportion of cats.

Mark Westman, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Sydney and Richard Malik, Veterinary Internist (Specialist), University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

For whom the bell tolls: cats kill more than a million Australian birds every day

File 20171003 12149 22qzom — On the prowl in the outback.
Hugh McGregor/Arid Recovery, Author provided

John Woinarski, Charles Darwin University; Brett Murphy, Charles Darwin University; Leigh-Ann Woolley, Charles Darwin University; Sarah Legge, Australian National University; Stephen Garnett, Charles Darwin University, and Tim Doherty, Deakin University

Cats kill more than a million birds every day across Australia, according to our new estimate – the first robust attempt to quantify the problem on a nationwide scale.

By combining data on the cat population, hunting rates and spatial distribution, we calculate that they kill 377 million birds a year. Rates are highest in Australia’s dry interior, suggesting that feral cats pose a serious and largely unseen threat to native bird species.

This has been a contentious issue for more than 100 years, since the spread of feral cats encompassed the entire Australian mainland. In 1906 the ornithologist A.J. Campbell noted that the arrival of feral cats in a location often immediately preceded the decline of many native bird species, and he campaigned vigorously for action:

Undoubtedly, if many of our highly interesting and beautiful birds, especially ground-loving species, are to be preserved from total extinction, we must as a bird-lovers’ union, at no distant date face squarely a wildcat destruction scheme.

His call produced little response, and there has been no successful and enduring reduction in cat numbers since. Nor, until now, has there been a concerted effort to find out exactly how many birds are being killed by cats.

Counting the cost

To provide a first national assessment of the toll taken by cats on Australian birds, we have compiled almost 100 studies detailing the diets of Australia’s feral cats. The results show that the average feral cat eats about two birds every five days.

We then combined these statistics with information about the population density of feral cats, to create a map of the estimated rates of birds killed by cats throughout Australia.

Number of birds eaten per square kilometre.
Brett Murphy, Author provided

We conclude that, on average, feral cats in Australia’s largely natural landscapes kill 272 million birds per year. Bird-kill rates are highest in arid Australia (up to 330 birds per square km per year) and on islands, where rates can vary greatly depending on size.

We also estimate (albeit with fewer data) that feral cats in human-modified landscapes, such as the areas surrounding cities, kill a further 44 million birds each year. Pet cats, meanwhile, kill about 61 million birds per year.

Overall, this amounts to more than 377 million birds killed by cats per year in Australia – more than a million every day.

Which species are suffering?

In a related study, we also compiled records of the bird species being killed by cats in Australia. We found records of cats killing more than 330 native bird species – about half of all Australia’s resident bird species. In natural and remote landscapes, 99% of the cat-killed birds are native species. Our results also show that cats are known to kill 71 of Australia’s 117 threatened bird species.

Birds that feed or nest on the ground, live on islands, and are medium-sized (60-300g) are most likely to be killed by cats.

Galahs are among the many native species being killed by feral cats.
Mark Marathon, Author provided

It is difficult to put a million-plus daily bird deaths in context without a reliable estimate of the total number of birds in Australia. But our coarse assessment from many published estimates of local bird density suggests that there are about 11 billion land birds in Australia,
suggesting that cats kill about 3-4% of Australia’s birds each year.

However, particular species are hit much harder than others, and the population viability of some species (such as quail-thrushes, button-quails and ground-feeding pigeons and doves) is likely to be especially threatened.

Our tally of bird deaths is comparable to similar estimates for other countries. Our figure is lower than a recent estimate for the United States, and slightly higher than in Canada. Overall, bird killings by cats seem to greatly outnumber those caused by humans.

In Australia, cats are likely to significantly increase the extinction risk faced by some bird species. In many locations, birds face a range of interacting threats, with cat abundance and hunting success shown to increase in fragmented bushland, in areas with high stocking rates, and in places with poorly managed fire regimes, so cat impacts compound these other threats.

Belling the cat

What can be done to reduce the impact? The federal government’s Threatened Species Strategy recognises the threat posed by feral cats, albeit mainly on the basis of their role in mammal extinctions.

The threatened species strategy also prioritised efforts to control feral cats more intensively, eradicate them from islands with important biodiversity values, and to expand a national network of fenced areas that excludes feral cats and foxes.

But while fences can create important havens for many threatened mammals, they are much less effective for protecting birds. To save birds, cats will need to be controlled on a much broader scale.

We should also remember that this is not just a remote bush problem. Roughly half of Australia’s cats are pets, and they also take a considerable toll on wildlife.

While recognising the many benefits of pet ownership, we should also work to reduce the detrimental impacts. Fortunately, there is increasing public awareness of the benefits of not letting pet cats roam freely. With such measures, cat owners can help to look after the birds in their own backyards, and hence contribute to conserving Australia’s unique wildlife.

We acknowledge the contribution of Russell Palmer (WA Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions), Chris Dickman (University of Sydney), David Paton (University of Adelaide), Alex Nankivell (Nature Foundation SA Inc.), Mike Lawes (University of KwaZulu-Natal), and Glenn Edwards (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) to this article.

John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University; Brett Murphy, Senior Research Fellow, Charles Darwin University; Leigh-Ann Woolley, Research Associate, Charles Darwin University; Sarah Legge, Associate Professor, Australian National University; Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, and Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Killing cats, rats and foxes is no silver bullet for saving wildlife

Tim Doherty, Edith Cowan University; Chris Dickman, University of Sydney; Dale Nimmo, and Euan Ritchie, Deakin University

Cats, rats and foxes have wrought havoc on Australian wildlife and ecosystems. Known as “invasive mammalian predators”, these are species that have established populations outside their native range.

Responsible for numerous extinctions across the globe, this group of species also includes American mink in Europe, stoats and ferrets in New Zealand, and mongooses on many islands.

One common solution is to kill these predators. However, research published this week in the journal Biological Conservation shows it’s much more complicated than that. Killing invasive predators often doesn’t work and is sometimes actually worse for native wildlife.

Killing for conservation

Management of the threats to biodiversity posed by invasive predators has focused on reducing their populations using lethal control. This includes poison baiting, trapping and shooting.

These programs have at times been successful at local scales and on islands. However, they are extremely costly and they often fail to stop declines of native fauna at larger scales.

Such management programs often occur with little regard for how they might interact with other threats that are impacting ecosystems. This has led to unpredictable outcomes of invasive predator control. Sometimes it doesn’t work or, worse, it results in a negative outcome for wildlife.

Key disturbances

We identified six disturbances with strong potential to increase the impacts of invasive predators: fire, grazing by large herbivores, land clearing, altered prey populations, the decline of top predators and resource subsidies from humans (such as increased food or shelter availability).

These disturbances interact with invasive predators in three main ways.

First, disturbances such as fire, grazing and land clearing result in a loss of vegetation cover, which makes prey more vulnerable to predation.

For example, small mammals in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia experienced more predation by feral cats in an intensely burnt area, compared with patchily burnt and unburnt areas. Grazing by livestock similarly removes protective cover. Research shows that feral cats prefer to hunt in these areas because of the improved hunting success.

Second, increases in food or declines of competing top predators can allow populations of invasive predators to increase, thereby increasing their impact on native species.

For example, introduced prey species, such as rabbits in Australia, can support larger predator populations. This can lead to increased predation pressure on native species – a process termed “hyperpredation”.

The extinction of the Macquarie Island parakeet was attributed to this process. The parakeet co-existed with feral cats for more than 60 years, but declined rapidly to extinction following the introduction of rabbits to the island in 1879. Resource subsidies, such as garbage or hunters’ carcass dumps, can also support larger predator populations, leading to greater predation pressure.

Third, many of these disturbances also have a direct impact on native species, which is exacerbated by invasive predators. For example, habitat fragmentation reduces population sizes of many native species due to habitat loss. Increased predation by invasive predators can therefore make a bad situation much worse.

Getting it right

Our synthesis shows that management of invasive predators is likely to benefit from employing more integrated approaches.

Maintaining habitat complexity and refuges for prey species is one way that invasive predator impacts can be reduced. This includes improved management of fire and grazing. Lower-intensity fires that retain patchiness could reduce the predation-related impacts of fire on native species. Such approaches may be the best option where no effective predator control method exists, such as for cats in northern Australia.

Native top predators such as wolves in Europe and North America or dingoes in Australia can have suppressive effects on invasive predators. “Rewilding” is an option in some places where these species have declined. Where native predators conflict with livestock producers, guardian animals can often protect livestock from predation instead of lethal control.

Reducing resource subsidies is a simple way of reducing food resources for invasive predator populations.

If lethal control is used, it should be applied with caution. Selectively removing individual pest species from ecosystems can do more harm than good. Multi-species approaches are the best way to avoid such surprises and the order in which species are removed is an important consideration.

Rather than focusing on single processes, conservation managers should consider the multiple disturbances operating in stressed ecosystems and use management actions that address these threats in unison. Such integrated approaches are essential if further extinctions are to be avoided.

The paper is free to download until July 30 2015.

Tim Doherty is PhD Candidate at Edith Cowan University.
Chris Dickman is Professor in Terrestrial Ecology at University of Sydney.
Dale Nimmo is Lecturer in Ecology at Charles Sturt University.
Euan Ritchie is Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences at Deakin University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Toxoplasmosis

Long-term impacts of latent infection

Putting it all together

Cat scratch and roundworm

What can we do?

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Surviving cats with a deadly game of hide and seek

Cats are expert hunters

Why cat eradication isn’t always the best option

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Surely not my cat

Urban cats

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Benefits of a life indoors

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Non-lethal methods

The risks of releasing unowned cats

Harming marine ecosystems

Humane euthanasia

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Feral cats are out of control

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A scavenging experiment

Predator prevalence

Carcass concerns

Conserving carnivores

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Binge eaters

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What is feline parvovirus and how does it kill?

How did it re-emerge?

How do we protect pet cats?

But what about unowned and feral cats?

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Counting the cost

Which species are suffering?

Belling the cat

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Killing for conservation

Key disturbances

Getting it right

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