3,000 Feral Cats Killed to Protect Rare Australian Bilbies

Australia has a feral cat problem. Cats and other invasive predators have driven dozens of the country's native bird, reptile and small mammal species into extinction, and continue to threaten several others. So many feral felines roam the country that the government often traps, shoots or poisons the animals in order to control populations. Most recently 3,000 feral cats were shot during a 16-day period in Queensland to keep them away from a 29-square-kilometer sanctuary designed to protect the endangered greater bilby ( Macrotis lagotis ), a defenseless, one-kilogram marsupial that looks like a cross between a mouse and a rabbit, although it is related to neither. Greater bilbies, the last surviving species of their genus, could once be found across most of Australia. Predation by invasive foxes and feral cats took a deadly toll on the species, which also encountered new competition for food and habitat from invasive rabbits. Today only about 600 to 700 remain in the wild. The only other Macrotis species, the lesser bilby, was driven into extinction in the 1950s by the same invasive fauna. [More]