Katherine Moseby wants to be clear: she doesn't hate cats. “They are cunning beasts,” she said as the truck roared down the desert road. “But I respect them. They're pretty incredible animals. Great hunters. Very smart.”
That was exactly the problem, said Dr Moseby, chief scientist and co-founder of Arid Recovery, a not-for-profit conservation organization and wildlife sanctuary in South Australia. Although cats are not native to Australia, they have invaded almost every corner of Australia. She gestured out the window to a dusty red expanse with little sign of life. But Dr Moseby said feral cats were definitely present, and they preferred the small, endangered marsupials that live in the Alid Recovery.
Even with extensive fencing, you need to be constantly vigilant to keep cats out. A few nights ago, a “pest control contractor” — a burly bearded sniper equipped with an all-terrain vehicle and a powerful spotlight — rode through the Arid Recovery Reserve and shot a cat. was.
When Dr Moseby, also a researcher at the University of New South Wales, pulled up to the dry recovery office minutes later, she headed to a small annex to check on the gunman's progress. A line of red water drops rolled down the cobblestones. “A trail of fresh blood is a good sign,” she said before pushing the door open.
Inside, the bodies of more than a dozen cats were piled up in a large, shallow bathtub. As Dr Moseby watched over the animals, he said the gunman had attacked four of them. The remaining specimens were captured within a few weeks and kept until researchers could examine their stomach contents.
It's a sight that would disgust most cat lovers, and Dr Moseby, who grew up with pet cats, would once have been “furious” at the idea of killing a cat, she said. But after repeatedly discovering the half-eaten carcasses of the sanctuary's two vulnerable giant bilbies and a burrowing beetong, she came to the stark conclusion: “I have to choose between cats and wild animals.” reached.
Cats aren't evil. However, they are hunters, and through no fault of their own, they cause tremendous damage to wildlife around the world. Australia has no native cats, but it poses a particularly serious threat to Australia, where there are many slow-breeding, snack-sized mammals.
“Cats are absolutely devastating,” said John Reid, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide and Dr Moseby's husband. The two founded Arid Recovery in 1997.
At least 34 species of native mammals have become extinct since European settlers and their cats began arriving in Australia in the late 18th century. Sarah Legge, a wildlife ecologist at Charles Darwin University and the Australian National University, said this was the worst mammal extinction rate in the modern world, and cats were making a “significant contribution”. “Our fauna hasn't evolved to deal with cats.”
Although pet cats cause some damage, the feral cat population is a particularly intractable problem. The Australian government has labeled feral cats a “nationally significant pest'' and has repeatedly “declared war'' against free-ranging cats.
For decades, Dr. Moseby and Reed have been on the front lines. They have dedicated some of their efforts to developing new tools to reduce the number of feral cats. “We need to do it as efficiently, effectively and humanely as possible,” Dr. Reed said. “But we need to do it.”
They also know that cats are too persistent to be eradicated completely, and that protecting native animals requires more than just cat removal. After all, there are two sides to the predator-prey relationship. And if the cat stays in Australia, Bilby and Beton will need to find a way to live safely with it.
Build a better cat trap
Arid Recovery Reserve is located just outside the small Australian mining town of Roxby Downs. Inside the vast desert. During our visit in early November, temperatures rose well over 100 degrees, even though it was spring in the Southern Hemisphere. A sun-bleached kangaroo skeleton.
The reserve's deep orange sand dunes are surrounded by wire fencing designed to keep out feral cats, as well as foxes and rabbits, European invaders that have wreaked havoc on Australia's ecosystem. As a result, Arid Recovery is an oasis for animals like the burrowing beton, a compact relative of the kangaroo that resembles a stocky, hopping rat.
By the mid-20th century, the beton was extinct on mainland Australia due to predation by cats and foxes. Currently, burrowing bettons are restricted to islands and fenced reserves such as Arid Recovery.
These 'wildlife-free safe havens' are the cornerstone of conservation in Australia. But Arid Recovery's founders saw them as a short-term solution. “Our aim has always been to try to ensure that conservation efforts take place outside the fence,” Dr Reid said.
For years they have tried to release the betons and bilbys, which have the upright ears of rabbits and the protruding snouts of tiny aardvarks, out of the sanctuary. They used traps, poison bait, and sniper rifles to reduce the local cat population, but the result was always the same. A large number of bilbys and bettons died. “It's such a shame to go out every day and radio track an animal that you've released and then find it dead under the bushes,” Dr Moseby said.
So the couple used what they learned about cat behavior to start looking for a new solution. Years of forensic investigation of feral cats, including swabbing the carcasses of dead prey and cataloging the stomach contents of captured cats, has shown that some cats (mostly large males) do most of the damage. It became clear that it was causing this. “Many of the cats that are killing these threatened prey are actually serial killers,” says Dr. Moseby.
In 2016, Drs. Moseby, Reid, and two colleagues proposed targeting these repeat offenders by turning vulnerable prey into poisonous “Trojan Horses.” Since then, they have been part of a scientific team developing tiny venom-containing implants that can be injected under the skin of threatened prey animals.
The implant's outer coating would melt, releasing a lethal dose of toxin into the stomach of a cat that ate the wrong animal. It may be cold consolation to the bilby who just had dinner, but it could save her compatriots from a similar fate.
Dr. Reed has led efforts to design better traps. As long as prey is plentiful, cats generally prefer hunting their own dinner rather than scavenging for food provided by humans. “They are often reluctant to enter cage traps unless they are starving,” Dr. Reed said, noting that good hunters are the most difficult cats to trap.
However, cats are not averse to keeping themselves clean by frequently licking their fur. So Dr. Reed developed a solar-powered automatic machine called Felixir that sprays a toxic gel on passing cats. The device is equipped with a distance-measuring sensor, a camera, and an algorithm to distinguish cats from other animals. In one six-week field trial, scientists estimated that deploying 20 Felixirs killed 33 cats. Dr Reid said more than 200 machines were deployed across Australia.
“I think this will be a very important addition to the toolkit,” Dr. Legg said.
In fact, even Arid Recovery required an array of tools to control the cat population, including traditional traps, surveillance cameras, and shooters. There was no foolproof approach. “Sometimes you're trying to catch one cat, and it can take 12 months to catch it,” Dr. Moseby said.
Research shows Australians view feral cats as a threat to native wildlife, with many supporting lethal control methods. But killing animals is always a touchy subject, especially when the target resembles a beloved family pet. Doctors. Mr Moseby and Mr Read have received their fair share of hate mail, and some celebrities and animal rights groups have spoken out against Australia's cat culling campaign.
Some scientists also disagree. Arian Wallach, a conservation biologist at the Queensland University of Technology, described himself as a “cat protection activist” and called the country's cat wars “mass murder”.
Dr. Wallach said ecosystems are complex and it is not a given that large-scale culling of cats would significantly reduce the chances of endangered species becoming extinct. At this time, conservationists need to accept cats as part of Australia's landscape and think creatively about other ways to protect endangered animals, she said. “If conservation is about providing piles of dead cats, I don't think my profession has anything to offer at all,” she said.
survival lesson
Dr Moseby is adamant that Australia needs to reduce the number of feral cats, but knows conservationists cannot expect complete eradication. “That's impossible,” she admitted.
There, she has also worked to combat what is known as “prey naivety.” According to the prey naivete hypothesis, no previous contact with cats means that some Australian animals Unable to recognize or respond to cat threats.
Research shows that fenced sanctuaries and other safe havens can make the problem worse by making it safe for sheltered populations to lose previously existing protective behaviors.
Dr. Moseby's unusual solution? Release a stray cat into one of Arid Recovery's enclosures, giving the threatened prey a crash course in survival.
In 2015, she did just that, adding five feral cats to a paddock full of bilbys and bettons. She hoped that over time, bilbys and bettons would learn how not to become victims, and that cats would promote natural selection by eliminating from the population the weakest, least accustomed to predators. .
It was a dangerous tactic. This experiment only works if the cat poses a legitimate risk. “We want cats to eat animals, coexist with animals, scare cats, hunt cats, and have near-misses,” Dr. Moseby said.
After two years, the bilbys exposed to cats became more cautious than the bilbys who lived in paddocks without natural predators. And when cats are released into new areas where they are crowded, they have a better chance of survival.
After five years, the betons in the cat farm were not only more alert than the more sheltered betons, but also had larger heads and paws. “We think that's because cats are more likely to escape, or because cats are more likely to prey on small animals,” Moseby says. “So it's driving the selection of larger animals.”
Is that enough?
Dr. Legg, who was not involved in the study, said the results suggest that threatened prey can induce rapid changes in their bodies and behavior. “But the question remains: Is that enough for these betons to survive in the presence of cats?” she said. “That seems a little unlikely. But I think it's worth a try.”
Dr. Moseby and his colleagues also suggest that the carnivorous marsupial quoll, a native predator, could be used to strengthen the defenses of animals that have been confined for long periods of time in a safe, predator-free environment. I am also researching sexuality. “We hope this is at least a stepping stone to improving the response to cats,” Dr. Moseby said.
Testing that hypothesis would require more time and data, so Moseby and postdoctoral researcher Kylie McAlter set out to collect data late one night last November.
Wearing headlamps, they roamed the predator-free ranch, navigating winding roads lined with baited cage traps. In prey naive studies, these animals served as controls. By capturing them regularly, researchers can collect data on their physical characteristics and behavior, which could serve as a comparison point for animal populations that coexist with cats and possums.
It was a successful night, bringing with it a bilby, three bandicoots, and the bewilderment of one betton after another sitting silently and unblinking in the trap. Scientists worked quickly, using hanging scales and calipers to measure each marsupial's size before releasing it into the desert at night. But the Betons were in no hurry to flee from these humans and their bright lights and strange scientific tools. “Leave!” Dr. Moseby urged.
It was easy to see how this submissive attitude would put bettors in trouble in the unforgiving world beyond the fence. However, there was little danger lurking here, and the Betons soon wandered off, some disappearing into the darkness, groaning quietly.