Conservation group wants feral cats declared pests in Taranaki Regional Council management plan

Friday, 29 January 2021

Toxoplasmosis, spread from cat faeces, is understood to contribute to deaths of Hector and Maui dolphins.

Warning: This story contains a graphic image.

Feral cats or stray cats are a bigger threat to native birds than ferrets or stoats and need to be labelled a pest in Taranaki, a conservation group says.

Forest and Bird Taranaki has made a submission to the Taranaki Regional Council asking its pest management plan be amended to include unowned cats in its list of pests.

Forest and Bird’s regional conservation manager Amelia Geary said the problem of feral cats had been overlooked in the council’s attempts to make the region predator free by 2050.

She said unowned cats, either feral or stray, which have not been microchipped or registered, were a bigger threat to native birds than mustelids, weasels, ferret and stoats, which are currently identified in the plan and have trapping programmes.

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Geary said there was a need to control feral cats to prevent the spread of toxoplasmosis in marine environments, and bovine tuberculosis among cattle.

Toxoplasmosis, which is spread by cat faeces entering waterways, is understood to be the primary cause of deaths of the rare Maui's and Hector dolphin along the North Island’s west coast.

Forest and Bird’s submission along with others from, Te Atiawa, Ngāruahine iwi, New Plymouth and South Taranaki district councils, Federated Farmers, and two members of the public will be discussed at the TRC’s policy and planning meeting on Tuesday.

Geary said since 2003 between 50 and 170 cats annually have been trapped by volunteers involved in a conservation programme to protect kiwi at Mangamingi, South Taranaki.

The area was a popular dumping site for unwanted cats, she said.

One feral cat trapped by a neighbouring farmer recently weighed 10kgs, she said.

“Our job is to keep kiwi safe. Without the support of farmers we would be in a hopeless situation, and unable to protect the kiwi population,” she said in the group’s submission.

In a statement, TRC environmental services manager Steve Ellis said the council did not monitor feral cats and there was no estimate of their numbers.

The council’s Towards Predator-free Taranaki programme targeted mustelids and covered 42,000ha in the region.

“Unfortunately cat dumping continues to occur in many places across Taranaki with people possibly unaware of the effects cats have on our native biodiversity,” he said.

However, an officer’s report in the meeting agenda recommends against adding feral cats to the list.

The report said Government funding that enabled the Taranaki Predator-free programme to commence was for mustelids only.

“The current trapping infrastructure targets mustelids and is not suitable for the trapping of feral and stray cats,” it reads.

Ellis said a 2018 review of the pest management plan found little support from the community to amend the plan to include feral cats.

TRC supported initiatives from the Government that better define rules around the control of feral cats, he said.

More clarity was needed nationally around the feral cat issue, given that some cats are pets and are beloved by people in the community, he said.

“That clarity needs to be defined in national legislation to ensure pest management programmes involving feral cats are undertaken in the right way.”

TRC worked with land owners through the Key Native Ecosystems (KNE) programme to voluntarily target feral cats on their property, and supported district councils, and urban land owners to control feral cats by providing cage traps, he said.

Rotokare Scenic Reserve Trust wildlife sanctuary manager Simon Collins said feral cats were poorly understood in Taranaki, and indications suggested a high density across some parts of the region.

“There is clear evidence of feral cats killing native wildlife, and that in the absence of sufficient control feral cats numbers can reach high densities,” he said.

Department of Conservation Taranaki district operations manager Gareth Hopkins said the department was legislated to control feral cats on public conservation land, by either poisoning, shooting or trapping, where they were a threat to whio and kiwi, he said.

Controlling feral cats was a constant battle as they can reinvade controlled areas over time, and were notoriously difficult to trap, he said.

For example, a trapping exercise on Little Barrier Island took 128 people 400 days to catch 100 cats, he said.

New Plymouth District Council animal control coordinator Karl Osten said under the Animal Welfare Act, and the council’s 2020 animal bylaw, it was illegal to abandon domestic cats. The bylaw limits urban households to three cats, or kittens over six months old.

A statement from SPCA national office spokeswoman Christine Sumner said the organisation advocated humane and effective management of feral cats, which must be part of an overall integrated plan to manage all cats in Taranaki, and New Zealand.

This included desexing, microchipping, and keeping cats at home to reduce the number of unwanted cats born each year which can contribute to feral cat populations, she said.