Cats the biggest killers

A trapped cat with the leftovers from its meals.

Forest & Bird was misquoted in a Northland Age editorial on Tuesday (the silly season) as having said that rats are more of a threat to native birds than cats. In fact, cats are very much a threat to our birds, and many other native animals as well.

In any case, there's no prize for being the biggest killer of native animals. Rats, cats, stoats, deer, pigs, possums, hedgehogs.

Our forests and wildlife are in crisis, and all of these animals - along with habitat destruction caused by humans, are playing a big part.

Bush Bay Action, an award winning community trapping group working in the Opua State Forest has caught 89 cats since 2011. Each cat would have been responsible for killing thousands of birds, weta, and lizards.

Bush Bay Action have also trapped over 6000 rats, 200 possums, 140 stoats and ferrets, and 1000 mice. Without large scale pest control and local trapping efforts, our forests and native animals have no chance against this onslaught of introduced killing machines.

Conservationists class cats into two groups - feral and domestic. Both bring different management challenges.

Feral cats have been abandoned by their owners or were born to other strays. They are extremely dangerous to the country's wildlife, as they hunt for food and often find meals in the form of native species.

Pet cats become a danger when their owners let them outside, giving them access to our defenceless native animals.

It is estimated that pet cats kill over a million native birds every year. That's why it's so important for us cat owners to keep our moggies indoors as much as possible, and definitely at night.

Late 19th century, the Stephens Island wren was hunted to extinction by a single cat - Tibbles - owned by the light-house keeper. What damage are our own moggies doing when we let them roam out in the New Zealand bush?

JULIA MORRIS
Forest & Bird Spokeswoman