Jessi Morgan: Predator Free NZ Trust CEO on the potential to add feral cats to the list of predators

The Department of Conservation is currently seeking feedback on its Predator Free 2050 strategy. 

The current strategy aims to completely eliminate five predators from New Zealand: rats, stoats, ferrets, weasels and possums. 

However, they’re now asking whether feral cats should be added to the list as well. 

Predator Free NZ Trust CEO Jessi Morgan told Francesca Rudkin that there’s estimated to be between 2.5 million and 14 million feral cats in the native bush. 

She says that at the time the strategy was originally created, people were less aware of the impact they were having on native species, but there’s now an awareness and willingness to have them included. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at BE.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The Department of Conservation is currently asking for public feedback
on its Predator Free twenty fifty strategy. One of the
big questions they ask is whether the feral cats should
be added to the target species list along with you know,
eur ratzy stotcy possums and things. And this is something
that Predator Free New Zealand Trust is really passionate about
and joining me now is their chief executive Jesse Morgan.

(00:33):
Good morning, Jesse, morning, Francesca. Hey, Yeah, how many feral
cats are there out there?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, we actually don't know, which is part of the problem,
but estimates are between two and a half million and
fourteen million, so there's a lot. There's a huge number
of cats in our native bush and and our forests
that we don't even really see or know about.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Potentially fourteen million.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Crazy, isn't it? Like so many? We also this number
of owned cats in the world, so per household in
the world, so we have about one point two million
owned cats as well to add to that. But yeah,
the feral cat numbers are rageous, really, and we don't
really have a good handle on the number of cats

(01:20):
that are out there, But we know people that are
spending time working in the bush. They all tell us
they just see them everywhere or on their game cameras
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So once upon a time we used to say there
were more sheep in New Zealand than there were New Zealanders.
So we'll be saying they're all feral cats in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
We're heading that way definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
So why are they not on the predator Free twenty
fifty target species list already?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, when the goal was initially announced in twenty and sixteen,
I think that New Zealand as a country wasn't really
ready for it. We hadn't really had the conversation, and
we weren't aware of the damage that feral cats were
doing to our native species. But that perception has changed
in the last kind of ten years. It's hugely shifted
and people really understand that feral cats are having a

(02:07):
massive impact on our native species, and so there's a
willingness now and awareness and a public wants this.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
What I didn't realize is that these cats, they're not
keeping the rats and mice and check is you might
expect them to.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
No they just can't of them, and the rats can
bre quickly that we can't keep up with them. It's
the same as rabbits, you know, the feral cats aren't
keeping on top of rat numbers either. Actually, what happens
is a number of rats and mice and rabbits increase
the feral cat numbers because there's more food out there.

(02:46):
So yeah, so they can't you know that myths. I
guess that we grew up with that will have a
barm cat and that will keep our mice and rats
at bait. Isn't isn't true. We've got really good traps
and other tools to do that.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Now, what kind of damage are they doing?

Speaker 3 (03:03):
They well, they're an apex predator in New zeal And,
so nothing else predates on them. So unless humans control them,
nothing else controls their number. But we know that they
are found from the you know, from all the way
up to alpine zones, and they hunt for fun, they

(03:23):
don't just hunt for hunger, and so they they're huge
impact on our native species duck ya. So of of
the of the the Nelson Lakes, fifty percent were done
by feral cats, the other fifty percent by stouts. Last
year one cat destroyed a whole colony of endangered urn

(03:45):
nests on a braided river down on Canterbury. And they
eat lizards, they eat bats. There's this famous story of
them of one cat clearing out a whole roost of
bats outside oh Kerney. I think it was about one
hundred and ten bats within a week and the cat
just kept going back and even the bats sorry every
night until they were gone.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Okay, So clearly it's going to make a difference if
we add them to the list and humanely remove them.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yes, it will. And by not adding them now, we
won't be able to add them to twenty thirty. And
so what that means is we're behind the eight ball
on the Predator Free mission, but we're then a limiting
kind of funding, research control work in the policy developed
development that's needed for us to eradicate feral cats across

(04:36):
New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Okay, so GeSe DOC is currently consulting on a strategy.
How can people contribute and have their say?

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah, they can either have this saves through the doc
website or we've created a quick submit form on our
own website that's under Predator Free z dot org forward
slash submit and so they can go in there and
write their thoughts on adding feral cats to the list.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
If we take a look just in general at this
mission to be predator free in twenty fifty, how are
we doing.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well? We're doing pretty well. I mean if you think
about when we announced this goal, we had no idea
on how we were going to do it. It was
a hugely ambitious goal and there was no recipe for
us to follow. So we've had these we've funded these
large landscape scale projects across the country including Predator Free Wellington,

(05:30):
Preda Free Katanaky WAYHIKEI And they've made these huge impacts
and you know, huge steps forward, I guess in our
learning of how we control predators in different environments, because
if we're going to do this, we can't just do
it on public conservation land. We need to do it
on productive landscapes and urban urban areas. So we need

(05:52):
to know how to control predators in these different places.
So that's going pretty well.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
And look, Juzie, just sorry. Going back to the feral cats,
I should have asked, if we are going to remove
them humanly, what does that mean? Because there can be
a little there is often some contra and the methods
that we use to try and control pests.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, so well. Actually, one of the first things we'll
need to do if we add feral cats to the
list is make sure we have a clear way of
identifying an owned cat. Feral cats are really different from
our other predators because there also cats are also an
important companion animal in New Zealand. So the first thing
we'll need to do is have mandatory kind of desexing

(06:32):
and microchipping so that our owned cats aren't contributing to
the problem and we can identify what as an owned
cat and they won't get caught up. At the moment,
we can't do any cat control near urban areas because
we run that risk of impacting a companion cat, which
we don't want to do. So there are a huge

(06:52):
number of tools out there. We know that DOC has
been working on some baits so feral cats for down
on Auckland Islands, so some toxic baits, but there's also
a lot of trapping that goes on. Community groups are
already doing this across the country, but by not having
them on the list, we're limiting the research and development

(07:13):
that's going into new tools, and we will need new
tools in different areas.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Wonderful, Thank you so much, Jesse. That was Jesse Morgan,
chief executive, Chief executive of Predator Free New Zealand Trust.
If you want some information, you can head there or
head to the Department of Conservation if you would like
to have your say for

Speaker 1 (07:31):
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