- Environmentalist urging cat owners to keep their pets at home at night to preserve the Island’s wildlife
- Mike Stentiford said that cats kill everything from birds to red squirrels
- Should cat owners do more to protect the Islands wildlife? Take part in our poll
- Watch a cat predation study by the University of Reading below
CAT owners are being urged to keep their pets in at night and fit bells to their collars – to help preserve the Island’s wildlife.
While at home they may want nothing more than a saucer of milk and a scratching post, when they are let out in the evening the fearless felines become prime predators, killing anything from birds to red squirrels.
- A new study from the government of Canada has found that domestic cats, both feral and owned, are the leading lethal threat to birds in the country, killing an estimated 200 million birds a year.
- The Australian government intends to cull two million feral cats by 2020 and to create ten cat-free safe havens for species most at risk.
- The domestic cat was introduced by settlers and the feral population alone today stands at about 15 million, threatening the survival of more than 100 native species and having contributed to the extinction of a further 27 mammals species.
- The RSPB estimates that in the UK, domestic and feral cats catch up to 275 million prey a year, of which 55 million are birds.
- The most frequently caught birds, according to the Mammal Society, are probably house sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds and starlings.
- Despite this, there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease, or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds.
Now Island ornithologist Mike Stentiford is encouraging cat owners to play their part in protecting under-threat wildlife.
‘While birds are their major quarry, cats are also known to hunt other species, including rabbits, red squirrels, slow worms, green lizards, grass snakes, shrews and bats,’ he said.
‘Sadly, any caught prey is not killed immediately, as cats have the cruel habit of treating them as playthings.
‘My advice to cat owners is, if you live in or near areas regarded as being of high wildlife density, like wetlands, woodland, open fields and anywhere considered a preserve for a variety of wildlife, please be aware of the huge killing potential your cat has and ideally keep them in at night.’
Unlike dog owners, cat owners are not required to license their pets and the animals are free to roam unaccompanied.
Mr Stentiford is being supported by Environment’s head of the natural environment, John Pinel, who says that fitting bells to collars gives a cat’s prey a chance of getting away.
‘All cats should have collars, and the collars should have a couple of bells on them,’ said Mr Pinel.
‘And cats should be kept in at night, just as you would with a dog.
‘You wouldn’t leave a dog out at night.’
Mr Pinel is also concerned about domestic cats who have gone feral and live freely around the Island, although a local charity is having success in keeping their numbers down.
‘The Cat Action Trust is doing a fantastic job catching feral cats,’ he added.
‘Then they have them neutered and rehome them.’
Mr Stentiford says that in the absence of statistics on Jersey’s domestic cat ownership, it is difficult to estimate the size of the feline population, but he thinks it must be ‘in the thousands’.
‘So often, a cat’s major prey count is unknown, but if a tally were to be made, even over a comparatively short period of time, say a month, an owner would find the high numbers not only upsetting but also extremely difficult to believe,’ he said.
