Cats Out Of Control

At its meeting on 28 September, the Southern Downs Regional Council finally adopted its cat management strategy. They had been working on this for more than 2 years after receiving a grant of over $90,000 from the Federal Government in 2020.

Unfortunately despite this grant and years of work by Council officers, the strategy has failed to deliver effective measures for cat control, preferring to concentrate on education programs and a hope to encourage more desexing of domestic cats.

Even more disappointingly, this strategy does not reflect the views of the local community who supported much stronger control measures. The public was invited to complete a survey on cat control last year and then to comment on a draft strategy in July this year. Responses to this showed overwhelming support for compulsory registration and desexing programs and more effective control of feral cats.

Many other councils throughout Australia have been far more proactive and apart from compulsory registration and desexing, many have also implemented cat confinement policies. Why is our Council missing in action? Responsible cat owners surely want their animals to be safe and healthy and not roaming about causing death to wildlife and a nuisance to neighbours.

Cats have a significant and devastating impact on our native wildlife and as a region with bushland areas of high biodiversity values, uncontrolled cats are decimating wildlife and contributing to the rising feral cat problem. Even if the Council does not care about protecting our native wildlife, they surely should be concerned about the impact of cat transmitted diseases on livestock and humans. For example, it has been estimated that cat transmitted toxoplasmosis is costing the Australian health budget $6 billion a year.

The Council needs to get serious about this issue and commit more money and staffing resources to tackling this significant environmental problem in line with action by other local authorities and state and Federal agencies. After two years, the expenditure of a significant amount of public money and much time of Council officers, we haven't much to show for it except the on-going destruction of our native wildlife.

Liz Bourne