Results of winter feral cat trapping blitz
Working with many dedicated landholders and community members across the Dudley Peninsula and Pelican Lagoon, the Kangaroo Island Landscape Board (KILB) has delivered the most intensive winter trapping and monitoring program since the feral cat eradication program commenced in 2020.
KILB Feral Cat Eradication Program Leader Paul Jennings said the active involvement of the community has been instrumental in the success of this program.
"From December 2023 to the end of September 2024, together with participating landholders, we've removed 347 feral cats from the Dudley Peninsula and Pelican Lagoon area using a combination of cage, soft-jawed leg holds, and thermal shooting," Mr Jennings said.
"During this time, 305 feral cats were removed via cage traps: 212 from the Dudley Peninsula and 93 from around Pelican Lagoon, west of the cat fence."
COSTS OF FERAL CATS
The staggering numbers speak for themselves: feral cats in Australia kill over 1.5 billion native mammals, birds, reptiles, and frogs, and 1.1 billion invertebrates each year.
In addition, feral cats can also carry infectious diseases transmittable to native animals, livestock, and humans.
IMPROVED TRAPS AND TARGETING TECHNIQUES
Mr Jennings said using game-changing technology on the traps and cameras vastly improved the program's efficiency, increased participation from landholders trapping feral cats and increased the KILB's ability to respond to cat sightings.
"Adopting Encounter Solutions trap monitoring technology, called "Celium", has been a game changer for the program. It is 100% accurate, reducing daily trap checks by 80%," Mr Jennings said.
"KILB has successfully used this technology over the past two years, making it Australia's largest trap monitoring network, connecting up to 726 cages and 200 soft jaw-leg hold traps across the Dudley Peninsula and Pelican Lagoon," he said.
Mr Jennings said the KILB used Felixer Grooming traps at locations that are difficult to access in more remote areas of the Dudley, targeting 27 cats during this period.
Mr Jennings said thermal optics, scopes, and drones were also recently used with very high success rates in locating and removing difficult-to-trap cats," he said.
"Using information gathered from our extensive network of 4G cameras and community cat sightings, we know where to direct our attention."
"This technique has been highly successful over the last few months, with 13 cats removed."
Mr Jennings said using remote cameras fitted with Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly improved monitoring and detection.
"The access to near real-time data on feral cat movements has enabled the timely deployment of control tools to locations with current cat activity and to verify the removal of known individuals," Mr Jennings said.
Mr Jennings said KILB team member, Murray Schofield, designed a new style of longer trap this year that uses cat scent, predominately urine, to attract feral cats, following repeated off-target captures and recordings of cats walking past baited traps.
We strategically deployed 44 of these new traps, which successfully removed 17 previously trap-shy cats since July.
LANDHOLDER-LED TRAPPING PROGRAM RESULTS
Supported by Agriculture Kangaroo Island and Livestock SA, the KILB helped 35 landholders across the Dudley Peninsula participate in the landholder-led trapping blitz.
"The KILB fitted landholder traps with Celium trap monitoring technology so they could see if their traps needed checking in real-time using the Rappt.IO app," Mr Jennings said.
"Rappt.IO is a free app that makes it easy to collect data, keeping track of captures and overall results and providing valuable data about cat movements throughout the district."
Landholders managed 115 cat traps on their properties, achieving a total of 3,100 trap nights, helping the program remove 202 feral cats during the blitz, 145 from the Dudley Peninsula and 57 from the Pelican Lagoon isthmus.
Landholders captured a total of 13 feral cats during the winter blitz.
"This is an outstanding effort, considering the winter blitz coincides with a busy time for primary producers," Mr Jennings said.
"However, this year was even more challenging due to extremely dry conditions and a very late break to the season," he said.
"We are especially thankful for their efforts."
COMMUNITY REPORTED SIGHTINGS
The KILB launched a "Feline Hotline" initiative for the community to report feral cat sightings on the Dudley Peninsula; this proved highly successful, with 18 calls received, which helped us to direct efforts to remove these cats.
"As we move into the summer months, please don't hesitate to report any cat sightings on the Dudley Peninsula via the Feline hotline on 0459 952 830," Mr Jennings said.
"Our experienced marksman has been instrumental in eradicating feral goats, deer and pigs from the island," Mr Jennings said.
"He is now turning his sights to feral cats on the Dudley Peninsula," he said.
"This information provides valuable data for our team to continue to target and eradicate cats."
To learn more about the results of the feral cat winter blitz and our planned activities over the summer months, please visit the KILB website: www.landscape.sa.gov.au/ki.
This project is jointly funded by the Australian Government, Kangaroo Island Landscape Board, a member of the Commonwealth Regional Delivery Partners panel, and Agriculture Kangaroo Island, Livestock SA and Ian Potter Foundation.
