about 56,000 owned cats in the act 25% of cats already contained 50% contained only at night 42,000...

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• About 56,000 owned cats in the ACT

• 25% of cats already contained

• 50% contained only at night

• 42,000 roaming house cats

• May be 25,000 stray cats

• Cats can roam 900m in a night (mean around 200m - NZ recommends 500m buffer)

•4555 homes <900m from Red Hill

• 850 household cats can roam on Red Hill each day or night

P Predation Hotspots• Grassland earless dragon• Striped legless lizard • Pink tailed worm lizard• Threatened & declining

woodland birds• Superb parrot• Perunga grasshopper• Waterbirds • Small ground mammals

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Priorities for cat curfew cat cur

• Apply urban buffer of 500 to 1000m to hotspots

• Of 114 suburbs, 57 (50%) within 500m of important known habitat

• A further 31 suburbs (27%) within 1000m

• Only 26 beyond distance a cat might travel to hunt

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• Barratt in early 1990s collected prey remains from presentations by 450 cats to owners

• Average catch of 10.2 prey items a cat per year

• 67 different species caught

• House mouse 56% and rat 8% of items killed

• 18 % of prey native birds 7% native reptiles

• 10,000 crimson rosellas + 20,000 silvereyes estimated to be caught by domestic Canberra cats

• Kunihira from 1993 -1995 collected 400 scats from stray cats at Parliament House and the ANU.

• Opportunistic feeders, food items included insects (gryllids, mantids, moths, grasshoppers, beetles, cicadas, dragonflies, flies, cockroaches and butterflies), mice and rats, ringtail possums, brushtail possums and food scraps.

• Insects most frequent food item, followed by mammals of which possum most important. Birds more important than scraps.

Scared to Death• Predators can have sub-lethal

affects through changing prey behaviour affecting birth and death rates.

• English study found that even a small decline in song bird fecundity, resulting from changed behaviour from cat presence, can lead to local extinctions

• 167 studies highlight fear impacts much worse than kills

Night vs Day time Curfew

• Cats travel further at night

• 62% of mammals caught at night• 70% of birds and 90% reptiles caught during the day

Prey caught /cat /yrNight curfew No curfew

Mammals and amphibians 6.2 7.6Birds and Reptiles 3.6 3.0