Rampant population of 20 million feral cats and foxes the biggest threat to endangered native animals

A rampant population of 20 million feral cats and foxes is the biggest threat to the survival of 12 endangered or vulnerable native marsupials, the Herald Sun reports.

Dr Jim Radford, ecologist at La Trobe, told Ross and John the immediate answer is in attempting to separate the endangered animal from foxes and cats.

“It’s about separating these species from introduced predators in the short term by putting them on islands that don’t have any cats or foxes on them, or from which they’ve been removed,” Dr Radford said.

“Isn’t that just delivering victory to the bad guys?” Ross asked.

“It is an emergency response, it’s not what we’re after in the long term,” he said.

“We identified 37 extremely predator-susceptible species in this study, 25 of them are already extinct, there’s 12 left.

“They’re the ones that we need to protect either behind fences or on islands.”

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