Australia declares war on feral cats with plan to 'cull two million by 2020'

Australia plans to kill two million feral cats over the next five years following concerns that the predators have been preying on wildlife and have left more than 120 native species at risk of extinction.

Declaring a “war on cats”, the federal government said it planned to use poison baits and has created a phone app called FeralCatScan for the public to alert authorities about areas where large numbers of the predators have been spotted.

Scientists believe feral cats have been involved in 28 of Australia’s 29 known native mammal extinctions in the past 200 years.

“It is very important to emphasise that we don't hate cats,” Gregory Andrews, Australia's first threatened species commissioner, told ABC Radio.

“We just can't tolerate the damage that they're doing anymore to our wildlife … Over 120 Australian animals are at risk of extinction from feral cats. So the scientific evidence is crystal clear that they're the biggest threat.”

It is believed there are about 20 million cats across the nation – and they kill about 75 million native animals a day. The cats arrived with the European settlers in the late 1700s and are the same species as domestic or alley cats, but have since gone wild and spread across the continent.

[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]