Air dropping frozen, poisonous sausages to kill feral cats
Sign warning of the presence of 1080 poison (sodium fluoroacetate) near Lake Kaniere on the West Coast of New Zealand. Photo: Wikipedia.
Australian officials are killing millions of feral cats in Australia by the bizarre method of air dropping poisonous, frozen sausages across the Outback. I presume only feral cats eat the sausages. Are they stamped with, ‘To Be Eaten By Feral Cats Only’? Do native species, the animals they want to protect, eat them too? I have no idea how they protect other species including pet cats and dogs. Perhaps it occurs deep into the Outback.
Feral cat Australia. Camera trap photo in public domain.
We are told by The Sun newspaper that the cats die within 15 minutes. The sausages are manufactured in a factory near Perth. This is yet one more way to kill feral cats in Australia. They have a device which recognises feral cats and which ejects a nasty poison onto their bodies which they then ingest and die. The cats are also shot in large numbers.
I’m told that the sausages are made from kangaroo meat, chicken fat, spices and herbs. The poison is the same one that is used on the device mentioned above, namely 1080. This is a synthetic form of sodium fluoroacetate. Sodium fluoroacetate is imported in a raw form from the United States. The chemical disrupts the central nervous system.
“No research studies have either proved or disproved the distress or pain of herbivores and omnivores poisoned by 1080” – Pestsmart.com
This killing programme was started in 2015. The reason for the mass killing of feral cats, as you might know by now, is that the Australian authorities believe that they kill native species and the feral cat is an invasive species on this continent.
However, in my opinion, the authorities in Australia exaggerate the amount of killing by feral cats and they speculate and guesstimate the statistics. They don’t even know how many feral cats there are in Australia so it’s impossible to work out how many native animals they kill.
I disagree with this cruel way of killing feral cats. I’m not the only one, far from it, and animal advocates such as Brigitte Bardot also decry these cruel methods. Brigitte Bardot wrote a letter to the Australian government to stop “animal genocide”.
The general consensus among Australian officials is that feral cats need to be eradicated completely on the island and that objective can be achieved in any way possible no matter how cruel. Any reference to the past as to how the feral cats came to be on the island i.e. through human carelessness, is completely brushed under the carpet.
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So to eliminate feral cats they kill all wildlife too. Sounds like a brilliant scheme. It’s not just poisoned bait that kills. The dead animals will in all likelihood be eaten by dingoes and die too. How about dropping poisoned hamburgers on Government House?
There has to be a better way to address the “cat problem” they think they have. They definitely have a human problem. What are they doing about the humans who are decimating an entire species of animal as well as collateral animals, which in the end won’t keep them from repopulating anyway. All these stubborn humans are doing is killing and causing untold pain and anguish.
Dingos would keep them in line. But of course they are being killed off. And this is again the humans fault because….they let the kids out and do not keep them indoors and get them fixed!! Dropping bait like this will kill more than just the cats. It will kill all the wildlife that eats it. IDIOTS!! While the cats are a problem indeed for the native wildlife baiting them like this will not work!
The Aussies are obsessed with killing cats so the chuck tons of poisoned sausages all over the country. Mad to me.