The eyes and ears of eradication
Meet the passionate and dedicated people working hard to drive change for healthier landscapes across South Australia. First up is Josh Mulvaney, Kangaroo Island Landscape Board's Project Officer, Monitoring and Detection, a critical member of the team eradicating feral cats from Dudley Peninsula.
Josh Mulvaney’s motivation is simple.
“The reason I keep turning up to this job is the chance to contribute to something that will leave this place better than I found it.”
For Josh, that means helping eradicate feral cats from the Dudley Peninsula on Kangaroo Island.
He’s part of the monitoring and detection team at the Kangaroo Island Landscape Board — the eyes and ears of the eradication effort that has removed more than 1,700 feral cats across 38,400 hectares since 2020.
The team manages 280 4G-enabled wildlife cameras that send near real-time images to an AI-based classifier. After verifying which images show feral cats, they alert the team on the ground.
“The trappers have a really difficult job,” Josh says. “Feral cats are cryptic and sometimes difficult to trap or hunt. We gather as much information for them as we can so that their job is not so huge.”
And the data is making a difference.
Josh says camera sightings often lead directly to the removal of a specific feral cat from the landscape.
But the biggest reward is what comes next.
“In areas where feral cat numbers have been significantly reduced, landowners are starting to report increasing birdlife.”
A small signal and a powerful sign that Kangaroo Island’s wildlife is bouncing back.
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