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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Ed McConnell

Australia to air drop poison sausages in effort to kill two million cats by 2020

The Australian government is air dropping poisonous sausages across thousands of acres of land an attempt to kill feral cats.

The country is trying to cull two million felines by 2020 in order to save native species which the animals are preying on.

Officials are already trapping and shooting cats but now the authorities are turning to a less conventional weapon — sausages.

Chunks of kangaroo meat are combined with chicken fat, herbs, spices and 1080, a poison predominantly used in New Zealand to kill invasive species like rats, the New York Times reports.

The cats that eat the treats meet their maker within 15 minutes.

There are millions of feral cats in Australia (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

The sausages are made in a factory near Perth, loaded on to the planes and 50 are dropped for every square kilometre of land where the cats roam free.

Shootings still equate for 83% of killings, though.

It's estimated cats, which were introduced by European settlers, have driven 20 native species to extinction and a 2017 report published in journal Biological Conservation found they kill 377m birds and  649m reptiles every year.

Gregory Andrews, the national commissioner of threatened species, said: "We have got to make choices to save animals that we love, and who define us as a nation like the bilby, the warru (Black-footed rock-wallaby) and the night parrot."

Poison sausages are air dropped over large open areas (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

He said they are the single biggest threat to native species.

Dr Dave Algar was part of the team to develop the deadly recipe and tested it on his own cats — minus the poison — to make sure they'd got it right.

"They've got to taste good,” he said, "they are the cat's last meal."

Australia wants to become predator free by 2050 (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

The government attracted fierce criticism when they announced their planned cull in 2015, with 160,000 people signing petitions calling for them to scrap the scheme, dubbed "animal genocide" by activist and former actress Brigette Bardot.

Conservationists say the government is failing to address other factors, such as development, logging and mining, and using the cull as a distraction.

But Australia, which is aiming to become predator free by 2050, isn't the only country to come down hard on felines, New Zealand is toying with the idea of a total ban.

Last year coastal town Omaui on the South Island tried to outlaw domestic cats but decided against it after a backlash.

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