Grey, stop acting like a poor man's Sir David Attenborough, you won't win an Academy Award for it, you sound like a postiche of an unfortunate anachronist trying to project an understanding of natures ups and downs.

Do try to act like a normal fallible human being. It's really not what you know, it's the smug way you attempt to convey your expertise.

freediver wrote on May 31^st, 2013 at 7:48pm:


Cats are reckoned to have arrived on the North West coast of Australia from dutch shipwrecks in the 1700's, though many believe it happened during the 15thC via Indonesia.

As I've pointed out there's no case for subscribing extinctions of animals at and above the size and ferocity of Western Ringtailed possums to cats.

So here's a fair list of extinct Australian animals.


http://www.australianfauna.com/status/extinctmammals.php

Let's take one example the Short-tailed Hopping Mouse (Notomys amplus), sounds like an ideal candidate to blame on the cat right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-tailed_hopping_mouse

Sure enough this exresident of Charlotte Waters, (near Alice springs) has its demise attributed to cats, foxes and 'habitat alterations'. The info attributed to Tim Flannery no less.

Now the last known mice specimens were seen in 1896. Foxes were introduced in 1845 to Sydney and Melbourne. They spread quickly following the trail along the coast of the rabbit explosion. It would've taken some extremely enterprising foxes to have headed directly into the desert in the hope of eradicating hopping mice. Not impossible though.

But wait, could there be some other factors at work here? For example what other predators could have helped? Eagles and hawks for a start, armed with bifocal eyes that can spot a mouse from a kilometre away, talons and a ripper beak, hhmmmm not a bad predator of mice you'd think. Then there's Dingos, snakes, lizards... so what special armanents did the fox and cat bring to the war on hopping mice?

And what defence did hopping mice have? I mean with natural predators easily as ferocious as any intoduced they must've had SOMETHING? Well size for a start, it takes energy to catch and if the catch doesn't represent much of a profit why bother? Then there's camouflage, but mostly it's down to numbers. when numbers fall to a level where bumping into them is unlikely, predators look elsewhere or die.

Makes no differ whether the predator is a perenti or a cat. So what happened to the habitat hmmmm? Well one thing we know is that the Overland Telegraph Line went through the area in 1872 and a permanent repeater station was left manned in Charlotte and that meant a station master, four operators and a linesman. We know that every tree for miles was used to support the line and that crew needed what was left for warmth and cooking. What did they eat? Did they have stock?

No no, it gets too hard, let's just say the cats did it

freediver wrote on Jun 1^st, 2013 at 1:26pm:



Link please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephens_Island_Wren

Quote:


What terrible cats.
Most pussies wouldn't do that.
This one wouldn't harm a grasshopper:

Well said, Mr Grey. A voice crying in the Wilderness.

With the advent of the mass-immigration of people coming from overseas where cats are part of the domestic scene, it was inevitable that cats were destined to be brought to Australia and that some would eventually go feral.

Australia's endangered species of small animal that are on the menu of feral cats can easily be collected in large number by university and government zoology teams, and then transferred for safe-keeping to live on our hundreds of cat-free islands ~ as well as being given to zoos all over the world.

The feral cats are here to stay. Bounty hunting will do absolutely nothing to reduce the problem.

Some things have to be accepted as a fait accompli. There are thousands of feral donkeys, feral camels, brumbies, water-buffalo, feral goats, foxes, rabbits, toads... and dangerous packs of feral dogs that even threaten human life Out There.

We're stuck with it.

And most of all, the immigration influx is to be ramped up as never before ~ once again prompting development to encroach upon the native bushlands.

In the whole accounting of damage to native wildlife and their habitat, feral cats are just one small slice of the cake.

Sheep, wild pigs, imported wild deers, cattle ...

Feral cats are small fry within the Big Picture.

And then our rivers are getting totally screwed by imported catfish and blue algae.

Indian Myna birds.

Privet.

A thousand and one imported weeds.
   

Quote:


10 years without parole.

Biscuits and water only.

No flea collar.

In a cell next to where they keep the American Pitbull Terriers on Death Row.

Hello Muffin. 

Grey is correct.

Cats might affect the numbers of some animals, but the effects are exacerbated due to human influence.

Abo’s up the top have been hunting and eating cats for over a century. They chase them till they are exhausted then smack them on the noggin and into the coals.

There’s a doco…

1000 cats??? Something like that.