In North America, the feral cat poses little threat to the native ecosystem as predation from the Coyote has kept it confined to urban areas. In Australia, the feral inhabits the entire continent from the snowy highlands to the arid interior and is pushing Australian birds, reptiles and marsupials towards extinction.

But Australia was not always the cat paradise that it is today. It is quite probable that over the last 10,000 years, the cat was introduced by successive waves of Indonesian, Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch mariners. However, it seems that the cat found it difficult to take hold in an ecosystem containing Devils, Thylacines (Tasmanian Tigers) and nomadic Humans.

When the English introduced the cat in 1788, it was into an ecosystem in which Devils and Tigers had recently become extinct, and the local Humans were soon to stop living a nomadic existence.

As well as being aided by a lack of competitors, the cat was aided by Humans deliberately releasing them into the wild in order to control rabbits and mice. Although the cats did quite a good job keeping the rabbits and mice under control, they also preyed upon native birds, marsupials and lizards that had not evolved defences to it. This led to mainland Australian suffering a significant decline in ecological biodiversity.

Thankfully, the island state of Tasmania had the Devil, and this helped the local ecosystem resist some of the negative attributes of the cats. The Devil is primarily a scavenger. It has evolved a good sense of smell to find dead animals, and powerful jaws to chase any other carnivore off the carcass. In Tasmania, Tiger Quolls do most of the hunting of live animals, only to then find the Devil following their trail, and then chasing them off their kills. Since being introduced to Tasmania, the cat has found itself in a similar position to the Quoll. It hunts, and is then chased off its kill by Devils. Cat remains have also been found in Devil stomachs. This may indicate that the cat's lack of endurance has been exploited by Devils.

Being constantly chased off their kills, and possibly eaten, has resulted in Tasmania having by far the lowest cat concentrations in Australia. As a consequence, Tasmania has not lost a single marsupial, with the exception of the Thylacine, since colonisation.

On mainland Australia, significant money has been spent in cat eradication programs. The use of 1080 is a favoured method. 1080 is a synthetically produced substance that is a replication of a naturally occurring poison found in plant species such as poison bush, kite leaf poison bush, poison pea, and wallflower poison bush. Although native animals can eat the foliage, seeds and flowers of the plants with no ill effect, it is deadly on the feral animals that have not evolved alongside it.

Despite the impressive science behind it, it is very cruel, expensive, and for a country of 7,600,000 square kilometres, it has zero chance of success. It simply can't overcome the vacuum effect. Once cats are removed from a region, more simply migrate in.

There are also large areas of Australia where poisoning can not be used. These areas include farming land, and urban communities. Farmers don't want local cat populations eradicated because to do so would result in plague populations of rabbits and mice. Although constant poisoning and warren ripping regimes are in an ecologist's interests for they bring with them funding, they are not in a farmer's interests as they are expensive and time consuming. The cats do a better, cheaper, and more sustainable job.

As is to be expected, different agendas have led to some heated division between ecologists and farming communities. Ecologists refer to the farmers with all manner of unsavoury insults, while farmers tell the ecologists to do something constructive with their lives.

Recognising the futility of the poisoning regimes promoted by ecologists, some scientists have taken a more holistic approach to the issue. Professor Chris Johnson, from James Cook University, has argued in favour of reintroducing Dingos, Quolls and the Devils to the various mainland ecosystems that humans have eradicated them from. Professor Johnson has stressed that native predator communities need to be rebuilt as they have the ability to remain in balance with native prey. As native predators replace the feral predators, or reduce their numbers, native prey is able to rebound.

In regards to how the Dingo would go against the fox and the cat, Professor Johnson has some interesting research backing up his proposal. He has found that in places where Dingoes are rare or absent, and foxes and cats are abundant, 50 per cent of ground-living mammals have vanished. Where Dingoes remain abundant, the rate of local disappearance is 10 per cent or less.

In regards to how the Devil would go when put up against a fox, and a Dingo, the proposal shifts to one of hypotheticals. Palaeontologist Stephen Wroe has analysed how they would go in a one-on-one battle and found:

"In one-to-one situations, our results suggest that the devil would easily prevail and even give dingoes [wild dogs] a run for their money."

In regards to how the Devil would go against the cat on the mainland, the proposal is again a hypothetical. Based upon the Devil's characteristics, however, things do look prosperous. The Devil is a terrible hunter, which is why it is primarily a scavenger, and why it follows the scents of Quolls in order to remove them of their kills. It would be reasonable to expect that, in mainland ecosystems, it would follow the scents of cats. In ecosystems with high numbers of trees, the Devil's influence would be limited to removing the cats of their kills while the cat watches from the trees. In ecosystems with low numbers of trees, the cats itself might find itself being hunted. The cat, although agile and fast, has no endurance. It tires so easily that even a human can quickly catch it. If the cat lacked a tree to hide in, it would meet the Devil's jaws. If it lacked a rock ledge or tree to hide its kittens in, they too would meet the Devil's jaws.

It is unlikely that the introduction of native predators would lead to the complete eradication of the cat, and that is probably a good thing. Proponents of complete cat eradication are driven by an ideological desire to make Australian environments pure by removing all the non-natives. In a way, they have a thinking that is reminiscent of Nazi Germany - except it is an animal rather than a Jew that is the object of their hate. However, if the ideology is taken out of the equation, then one would realise that a purely native environment, and an ecologically diverse environment in which native animals have their survival assured, are not one and the same. Cats do serve a role in controlling mice and rabbit populations, and benefits are achieved as a consequence. The goal of environmentalists needs to be building up the biodiversity of predators, and prey, so that the damage of the cat can be reduced, and the survival of native species ensured. It shouldn't be to mould an environment to suit their ideological fantasies, or to express their hatred for a foreign animal.

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1) The Geelong AFL team is known as the Cats.

2) A Perth basketball team is known as the Wild Cats.

Industry

1) Scientific research - Researching the damage caused by cats is a very lucrative profession. Thus far, the research has been effective in ascertaining where the cats have come from, what they eat, how they behave, how they breed, how they hunt and places where they live.

In theory, the research is intended to find a way to eradicate them. In practice, the research is used to justify the need for more research funding. Such is academia.

2) Poisons- Some companies manufacture cat poison and sell it to environmentalists or councils. It is an ineffectual method of control that has undesirable side effects.

3) Enclosures - Private and public funding is sometimes made available to build wildlife enclosures that have big fences to keep the cat out.

4) Pets - Cats are popular pets in Australia. Unwanted litters are often dropped off at the RSPCA or taken out bush and set free.

5) Work for public servants - Rather than implement solutions, the federal government likes to spend money on studies, writing policy, implementing awareness campaigns and then monitoring the success of the awareness campaigns.

As part of this approach, the federal government has created the Threat Abatement Plan for Predation by Feral Cats. In typical public service jargon, the plan uses lots of words to avoid recommending a concrete solution. The jargon includes:

• implementing feral cat control programs in identified regions of high conservation priority
• encouraging the development and application of innovative humane feral cat control methods
• collecting and disseminating information to improve our understanding of the ecology of feral cats in Australia, their impacts and humane methods of control

Feral cats in Tasmania