Landcare Tasmania has recently made a submission to the Senate inquiry investigating the problem of feral and domestic cats in Australia.
Our Cat Managaement Working Group, supported by a number of member groups and experts undertaking cat management programs around the State, were able to pull together a number of collective issues and solutions that are presented in the submission. This submission follows on from our State Government submission in Oct 2019.
Our working group has been formed from the Landcare Tasmania Members Council and also includes a number of experts in cat management, to assist in consolidating up to date resources, precedent approaches and training and support to empower community Landcare groups to reduce the negative impacts of feral and stray cats across Tasmania's environmental, agricultural and economic landscapes.
Issues identified by our membership, and addressed in the submission, include:
- Primary and secondary impacts of stray and feral cats on native wildlife
- Cat containment and lack of addressing domestic/ stray cats
- Current lack of state-wide regulation
- Need for compulsory cat registration
- Cat management facility shortfalls
- Planning required for landscape scale cat control
- Support for local government cat management
- Increased RD&E into alternative control methods for feral cats
These issues are addressed in our senate submission attached HERE and state submission HERE
