Australia Campaigns to Kill Millions of Feral Cats
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iStock/Thinkstock(SYDNEY) — Australia is declaring war, not on extremists, but on cats.
Part of a strategy to protect endangered birds and small mammals, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced a plan to humanely cull 20 million feral cats by 2020.
Cats that live in the wild are “a major cause of decline for many land-based endangered animals such as the bilby, bandicoot, bettong and numbat,” according to the government’s Department of Environment website.
Officials will bait and poison them with a toxin mixed into chicken and kangaroo meat . The meat mixture will be hidden underground where animals like foxes can’t eat them.
The $6.6 million effort has received push back from animal rights activists like former French actress Brigitte Bardot.
In an open letter to Hunt, Bardot called the five-year long effort “inhumane and ridiculous” adding “your country is sullied with the blood of innocent animals.”
Australia has a long history of killing animals for environmental reasons. Earlier this year, overpopulation and starvation led to the culling of millions of koalas in Victoria.
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