Australia has announced a five-year plan to rid the country of feral cats by killing them with a toxic gel in order to keep native species safe.
Feral cats are responsible for the extinction of over two dozen species in Australia and are severely impacting the survival of many others. The West Australia government debuted a plan on Tuesday that involves using a deadly new tool that will cull the invasive cat population.
"These feral cats are incredibly devastating on native animals," West Australia Environment Minister Reece Whitby said at a press briefing announcing the initiative, as reported by local news network ABC Australia. "We need to do something: this is a major increase in our activity. We're trying to give native species a fighting chance against this incredible, voracious predator."
Australia's solution to this problem is the Felixer grooming trap, which will spray the cats with toxic goo. The cats will then lick the gel off themselves—containing 1080 poison, or sodium fluoroacetate—poisoning themselves in the process.
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Felixers will be rolled out as part of the West Australian government's five-year feral cat strategy. This will include leasing 16 of the Felixers from their parent company Thylation using non-government conservation groups and Commonwealth grants, and placing them in areas where there are threatened species living.
The Felixers are solar-powered and use lasers and cameras to tell if a passing animal is a feral cat or not, only spraying them with the poison if they have the shape and gait of a cat. They work best in areas where lots of the cats pass through, like fence lines.
"In thousands and thousands of tests, it's been able to correctly identify a feral cat as opposed to a native animal," Whitby said
The Western Australian Feral Cat Working Group found that the Felixers are useful in areas where baiting and using firearms is inappropriate, but that they were expensive and not suited to use on a large scale.
The five-year feral cat strategy will also include baiting across the state where appropriate, increasing up to 880,000 baits annually, as well as increased funding for communities to help eliminate the cats.
The Felixers are solar-powered and use lasers and cameras to tell if a passing animal is a feral cat or not, only spraying them with the poison if they have the shape and gait of a cat. They work best in areas where lots of the cats pass through, like fence lines.
This doesn't sound reliable.
"In thousands and thousands of tests, it's been able to correctly identify a feral cat as opposed to a native animal," Whitby said
I don't believe you.
But good luck to Australia, I guess.
There's definitely no way it could tell between feral cats and people's pets.
People should keep their ecological pests inside their homes.
True, but killing them would still be pretty shit considering there are people that love them.
If they loved their cats they would protect them and not let them destroy native wild life that has no concept of predators.
yes, people only ever do the right thing when they have good intentions. that's actually all it takes!
come on, this is dumb as fuck and callous to boot
Gonna be a touch lesson for Bethany the Australian cat haver
I'm not confident it will be able to distinguish between cats and native wildlife
The Felixers are solar-powered and use lasers and cameras to tell if a passing animal is a feral cat or not
They work best in areas where lots of the cats pass through, like fence lines.
If they're so good at distiguishing between feral cats or not, why do they work better when placed in an area where the probability of a passing animal being a feral cat is higher lol
I read this as just being a question of traffic. As an immobile poison turret you need to put it where cats will pass by. If you put it out in the desert or in the middle of the street, it’s not going to have the opportunity to spray many cats. But it will get stir crazy and start spraying anything that comes nearby
Felixers will be rolled out as part of the West Australian government's five-year feral cat strategy. This will include leasing 16 of the Felixers ...
Federally funded plan to house all homeless cats and get them spayed and neutered and cleaned up from diseases. Not even joking, government pays you to own a cat.
You realize these are not kitties right? They are feral. They would eat you before they would let you pet them.
I'm not gonna argue that it can't be done but they are feral, not strays, or alley cats that were abandoned as kittens, they are multiple generations removed from domestication. They have lived in the bush from birth and fear humans.
It can be done but you cant do that with 5 million cats. Especially not in a nation of 9.7 million households (25 million people) where incidentally there are roughly 150-200 thousand kittens surrendered to animal shelters a year. Kill them all and adopt the kittens from the shelter that are mostly put to sleep.
Cats are killers. It's like trying to tame a shark. Even if one of these cats was made to be ok with humans they would be chomping at the bit to get outside and kill native animals that have no concept of being prey.
Cats are killers. It's like trying to tame a shark
dogs are also killers. Where do you think domestic housecats come from if not from tamed feral cats.
taming 5 million cats is certainly a big task and it's probably infeasible but it isn't impossible by any means. They probably should be rounded up and put down but in a more humane way than poisoning them
rounded up and put down but in a more humane way than poisoning them
How is making people catch them, bag them, ship them, and fight them to stab them with a needle more humane than they lick poison off themselves have a small fit and die?
Poison can be a miserable death. I don’t trust a tech bros cat-poison-bot to have a poison that doesn’t hurt like hell.
It’s a sad situation all around tbh. I just hope they find something that prevents cat-induced extinctions that’s as humane as possible while still getting the job of saving local species accomplished.
That's how I got my cat. It takes longer to develop a bond but when you do it really sticks.
oh yeah poisoning them won't go wrong esp if you just leave the corpses around to spread that poison to other organisms
Yeah, I'm sure that the final solution for an animal that's barely domesticated in the first place is going to work out great. They totally won't repopulate from scratch with really fucked up behaviors.
Accidentally selecting for cats that never lick themselves clean and ending up with the absolute filthiest feral cats imaginable
me and the boys spraying all the native endangered cats
…
How about state funded TNR? This is fucking insane
Also what do they think happens to the dead cats? They evaporate?
How about state funded TNR?
They are invasive and kill native animals. They have 0 natural competition or predators. Them being in the wild, even neutered is ecocide.
Also what do they think happens to the dead cats? They evaporate?
They compost in the bush.
Good point tnr doesn’t really solve a short term problem… but the poisoned cats don’t compost they get eaten by scavengers
Oh. They are using 1080. Fucking hell. How hard is it to find something that will work specifically on felines?
I'd bet the damage the cats do still outweighs the damage secondary poising would do.
I'd bet the damage the cats do still outweighs the damage secondary poising would do.
Secondary poisoning will kill 1 or 2 animals per cat. The cat will kill hundreds if not thousands over the course of its life.
well no because poison and toxin spreads to the next animal in the chain after each one eats it. This is why so many fish have high levels of mercury
I don't know anything about poison but couldn't you use a poison that decayed to harmless chemicals over time?
They tested its decay in the silliest way possible:
Research by NIWA showed that 1080 deliberately placed in small streams for testing was undetectable at the placement site after 8 hours, as it washed downstream. Testing was not done downstream.
What the fuck?
GUYS I dropped a little ball at the top of a ramp and the ball straight up disappeared??? (I did not check the bottom of the ramp)
Ikr, apparently other studies show it does go away eventually but there’s no way that study was done in good faith.
A wombat with a comically large assault rifle “I’m from NSW and I say kill ‘em all”
Movies: We created terminators through our cold war research into robotics and AI
Reality: We created terminators to kill cats that we brought to the place they weren't supposed to be and released them into the place we weren't supposed to
I can support this in principle of protecting other native species but I dunno about the execution of this as far as stuff eating the poisoned corpses. I dunno though, maybe that wouldn't be as big of an issue as the cats themselves. Bummer though.
we must save the birds. we will do this by turning covering cat corpses with toxic chemicals. this is very smart.
You did a racism. You did an imperialism. You did a nationalism. You did a xenophobia. You did a white fragility. You did a weak apology. You did no growth. This makes it abundantly clear you don't even understand the intersectional nature of the multiplicity of your offenses.
The Warrior Clans will have their revenge against these twoleg scum. Be careful next time you go for a pint, mate...
