![]() "We therefore suggest that we need to look at making it easier for native prey to survive feral cat encounters while we work on developing broad-scale cat control methods." "We'd ideally just remove all the feral cats this is pretty tricky at a landscape scale, particularly in areas like Tasmania where broad-scale controls like poison baits are a risk to native carnivores. "Firstly, understanding why cats are so deadly can help us to figure out how to effectively manage them, and which native prey species are likely to be most at risk," Ms Hamer said. "Cats are present throughout all habitat types … even though individual cats showed quite strong habitat preferences, varied a lot between individual cats meaning that as a population they are active throughout all areas of the landscape, whereas quolls are more restricted to areas of native woodland." "Cats so predictably return to the same areas, a prey detecting any sign of a cat is more likely to use anti-predator behaviour … in response to any signal, such as a scent mark, which indicates that a cat has been in the local area, whereas such signs are a much less reliable indicator of the risk of a spotted-tailed quoll being present. "Cats revisit the same areas night after night after night, whereas spotted-tailed quolls will typically move between denning and foraging sites every few days. Ms Hamer said cats use their home range much more intensively than spotted-tailed quolls. ![]() Spotted-tailed quolls typically move between denning and foraging sites every few days, unlike cats.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |