Australia's Cats Kill More Than 1 Million Birds Every Single Day

Ordinary cats in Australia kill more than a million birds every single day, according to a newly published study. The findings were made by researchers from the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the National Environmental Science Program after looking at evidence from more than 200 different studies. Overall, the majority of birds are killed by feral cats, but pet cats take out a substantial number on their own.

According to the research, feral Australian cats kill about 316 million birds every year in the country, and pet cats kill another 61 million or so. That works out to 377 million annual bird deaths from cats alone, marking a huge threat to various species. Of the killed birds, in excess of 99-percent are native species.

Some regions experience more bird loss than others; the research found that the more remote parts of Australia can experience a much higher number of bird deaths caused by cats than populated regions. The same is true for the nation's islands. Crunching the numbers, the researchers found that cats are killing 338 different bird species in Australia, and 71 of them are threatened varieties.

This is a problem for obvious reasons: cats can't tell if a particular bird is part of a threatened species, and that means destruction for these vulnerable creatures. This is the first study of its kind that looks at the risk feral cats pose to Australia's threatened animals.

Australia already has control programs in place to deal with feral cats, but the research highlights the need to double down on those efforts. Of course, house cats aren't anything compared to the threat humans present.

SOURCE: Northern Daily