March 2025 Update - Dudley Peninsula Feral Cat Eradication Program

The Kangaroo Island Feral Cat Eradication team would like to sincerely thank the Dudley Peninsula community for their ongoing support of the program, particularly in light of this year's very dry seasonal conditions. Since the program’s inception in 2020, nearly 1,600 feral cats have been removed from the Dudley Peninsula.

We are pleased to provide the community with an update on our summer activities, outline the plans for our upcoming intensive winter knockdown, which will allow us to then mop-up the last remaining feral cats on the Dudley, and let you know what you can do to help us with this cause.

SUCCESS IN SIGHT

Today, we estimate that as few as 150 feral cats remain on the Dudley Peninsula. We've observed nearly a 70% decline in camera detections over the previous year, which area the lowest levels ever over the entire program's history.

Our team is now focused on working with the Dudley Peninsula community to deliver its most intensive knockdown program this winter to reduce the population even further. Success is in sight. We are working with the State and Federal Governments to secure top-up funding to seal the deal after their outstanding support to date.

With your help, we aim to reduce the remaining feral cat population by more than 90% in just one season. Fast tracking the program will minimise the risk associated with multi-year programs, where remaining cats can become more difficult to remove and can breed, supplementing the population.

LEGISLATIVE CHANGES ENABLES LARGER TRAPPING AREA

You may have noticed that most of our cage traps were closed over the summer to avoid attracting goannas and other wildlife active in the warmer months. At the same time, we switched tactics to soft-jaw leg-hold traps.

Recent amendments in legislation have enabled a broader use of soft-jaw leg-hold traps that, with landholder permission, will allow us to set these traps within a 1-kilometre radius of a residence and double the coverage of traps across the Dudley Peninsula.

Our team will contact landholders seeking permission to set soft jaw-leg hold traps in the coming weeks. We want to work with landholders to avoid any unnecessary disruption to farm activities leading up to lambing season.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP: If you have any concerns or questions about soft-jaw leg-hold traps, please contact Paul Jennings on telephone 8553 2476 or email paul.jennings@sa.gov.au.

UPGRADES TO CAT EXCLUSION FENCE

Upgrades will focus on three key weaknesses, these being the gaps at Hog Bay Road and Ratcliffe Track and increasing the extent of the fence into Pelican Lagoon.

In December 2024, approval was granted by the Department for Infrastructure and Transport and the KI Council to upgrade the Feral Cat Exclusion Fence. This approval will allow us to significantly narrow the gap at Hog Bay Road. We have been approved to construct wildlife and cat corridors parallel to the road on both sides. Corridors or raceways will allow wildlife to move freely and more importantly for us to direct cat movement for easier detection. Camera-activated audio deterrents and control devices, will be installed along raceways providing an extra level of confidence and security. We have engaged a contractor who is on track to deliver these upgrades over the coming months.

CAT DETECTION DOG DEMONSTRATIONS

Funding has been secured to support the deployment of trained feral cat detection dogs to assist with the eradication of feral cats on the Dudley Peninsula. The use of detection dogs is critical to the success of the program.

As feral cat densities continue to decline across the peninsula over the next 12 to 24 months, remaining feral cats will become increasingly more difficult to remove.

Specialist tools and techniques, such as detection dogs, will be required to remove every last feral cat, and following this, will be extremely important for proof of absence monitoring to confirm eradication success.

Over the coming months, a series of landholder demonstrations with detection dogs will be run on properties across the Dudley Peninsula, allowing landholders to see how these dogs work, including that they have no interest in wildlife or stock.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED: Call Paul Jennings on 8553 2476 to register your expression of interest in participating in a feral cat detection dog demonstration.

TEAMING UP WITH TRACKS AND THE SAND

We have partnered with the Aboriginal-owned and operated business Tracks in the Sand, founded by Ronald Boland.

Ronald left school at the age of 13. He started work as an Aboriginal stockman at Anna Creek Station and has spent most of his life out in the bush working on remote cattle stations in northern South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland.

Ronald believes the teaching and mentoring he received from the older Aboriginal stockman on managing and conserving the land has enabled him to pass this education on to other young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people he works and collaborates with.

Ronald and his team will be on the island closer to the winter trapping blitz. He'll be working with the feral cat team to share his knowledge of trapping and tracking learnt over more than 40 years in the bush.

The feral cat team are looking forward to helping Ronald’s team embrace the game changing technology applied by the program, including the Celium trap monitoring network.

We'll provide more updates about this project closer to the winter blitz. In the meantime, if you see Ronald and his team around the district, don't be shy to say G'day. He's an awesome bloke.

RESPONSE TO CAT SIGHTING REPORTS

We thank community members who have reported cat sightings via the Feline Hotline over the summer. The information you have provided has led to several captures.

In recent weeks, we’ve had increased cat sightings reported at Penneshaw, Black Point and Pelican Lagoon. We have responded by increasing our trap effort in these locations, which has seen the removal more than 10 feral cats. This focused effort will continue in these locations and be expanded to areas where cats are detected, or sightings reported, so please let us know if you see a feral cat.

In addition, we are working with landholders around Mouth Flat and Antechamber Bay who have reported cat activity at Neave’s Beach. This more difficult to access coastal area will be targeted using a multi-pronged strategy that includes traps, hunting with thermal optics scopes, drones, and cat detection dogs to remove cats from this location.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP: Please report any sighting of feral cats, cat tracks or suspected cat kills to the Feline Hotline on 0459 952 830 as soon as possible. We are particularly interested in the time and location of the cat sightings so this information can be passed directly to our team.

WORKING WITH LANDHOLDERS

We are incredibly grateful to the landholders who have allowed us access to their properties and partake in the annual landholder-led winter trapping blitz. We could not achieve the results to date without your help.

In the coming weeks, we will catch up with landholders and farmers across the Dudley Peninsula to seek their advice on how we can minimise disruption to their farm activities, including lambing, in the lead-up to the 2025 winter trapping blitz.

We will also be seeking information about resource points for cats such as dams and carcasses. In the meantime, if you are culling kangaroos and other abundant species, please let us know. This information is very helpful for us to locate feeding sites for feral cats before season breaks.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: If you want to chat about farm activities or want to take part in the 2025 landholder-led trapping blitz, please contact Chantelle Geissler on 0417 623 076 or email chantelle.geissler@sa.gov.au.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Several Dudley Peninsula community members have reported an increase in rats and mice over the past month and wonder if there is a correlation in the drop in feral cat numbers across the district. Speaking with farmers elsewhere across the island, this seems to be a consistent trend in response to the ongoing dry conditions, with numbers of both rats and mice remaining high particularly in and around resource points.

We are also receiving some really encouraging reports from Dudley landholders of growing numbers of native wildlife, such as bush-stone curlews, wrens and juvenile goannas in response to our intensive cat control effort. This is extremely exciting and for some landholders they haven’t observed native wildlife in these numbers for a very long time.

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAM?

It’s shaping up to be a very interesting year for feral cat eradication on KI. We will provide a further update closer to the 2025 winter trapping blitz. For a complete round-up of the program's 2024 results and achievements please visit the KI Landscape's website: www.landscape.sa.gov.au/ki.

Tune into the ABC’s Landline program on 16March featuring a story about feral cat eradication on the Dudley Peninsula as we prepare to eradicate every last cat from the district. Local farmers, Andy Gilfillan and Ros Willson (below) also share their experience with feral cat eradication in the Landline story.