Cat owners are being urged to keep their pets inside, with researchers finding 13 of Australia’s native mammals now exist only in conservation havens because of introduced predators.
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The Threatened Species Recovery Hub, a collaboration of scientists from 10 leading Australian universities, has been conducting an audit of Australia’s animal conservation havens.
They found 13 species now only exist within the havens, including the eastern barred bandicoot and the greater stick-nest rat.
Professor Sarah Legge from the University of Queensland said the main cause of the species dying out elsewhere was being hunted by cats and foxes.
“All of those 13 (species) are represented on islands, and eight of those are also represented in fenced areas on the mainland,” Professor Legge said.
“We must fix this problem, because it is just devastating the ecology of this country.
“Havens are the most extreme form of intervention, but there are a range of species which benefit when you just reduce the density of cats and foxes.”
Currently there are about 101 island havens quarantined free of introduced predators, with a combined area of more than 2000 square kilometres.
There are also 17 fenced havens on mainland Australia covering 346 square kilometres.
In the mainland havens, the main threat is cats.
“We don’t have a way of getting rid of cats across a wide area, they’re hard to trap, they’re hard to find and shoot, they’re really hard to control,” Professor Legge said.
In wilderness areas where the havens are the cats are feral, however all of them are descended from former pets that never returned to their owners.
And even domestic cats can cause problems when let out of their owner’s house.
But Professor Legge said keeping cats locked up helped everyone - including the cats.
“There’s plenty of research now showing it’s much better for your cat to remain indoors,” she said.
“Cats that go out get into fights, they get lost, so as long as you’re providing a behaviourally rich environment indoors, it’s much better for your cat.”
Dr Michael Bode from Queensland University of Technology said there needed to be national collaboration and co-ordination on the havens to prevent future mammal extinctions.
“We now know where new havens need to go, and with just 12 new havens, we can protect every threatened mammal species vulnerable to predation by cats and foxes.
“But longer term, we really need to find ways of reducing fox and cat impacts across Australia, so we can restore our native mammals to landscapes at bigger scales.
“Until then, cat and fox-free havens will be critical in preventing extinctions.”
In Queensland, UQ researchers are attempting to restore bilby populations in Currawinya National Park, a fenced predator-proof haven in far south-western Queensland.
Researchers say bilbies are highly adaptable and when the threat of foxes and cats is removed populations can increase rapidly owing to their short breeding cycles.
