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R/£ Culling of Robben Island cats resumes
April 13, 2006 Edition 1
John Yeld
The shooting of Robben Island's feral cat population has resumed, to the dismay of the SPCA but with the firm approval of seabird conservationists.
The shooting programme - to rid the island of cats which have been devastating the breeding efforts of several seabird species and seriously affecting the populations of dwarf chameleons and other reptiles - was suspended last month to allow the SPCA to attempt to trap as many cats as possible and take them to the mainland.
It followed a similar attempt by the animal welfare group Beauty Without Cruelty last year, which was largely unsuccessful with only about a dozen cats trapped.
But the SPCA was equally unsuccessful, managing to catch only eight cats.
At a meeting on Monday between the Robben Island Museum, which manages the island, SPCA officials and UCT seabird experts, it was decided to resume shooting immediately, to target all the cats - including previously sterilised and re-released animals - and that no cats would be allowed on the island.
Previously, the plan was to keep a few sterilised cats on the island to help keep the rat population in check.
However, this was opposed by the birders, who pointed out that sterilised cats still kill birds and reptiles.
Robben Island is a World Heritage Site, and the managers were told by an international monitoring mission in February 2004 that this status was in danger, partly because of the cats and their impact on the island's ecology.
The decision to resume shooting has angered the SPCA.
Allan Perrins, chief executive of the Cape of Good Hope branch of the SPCA, said they agreed the cats needed to be removed, but they wanted "an effective and efficient, non-confrontational, non-lethal sustainable solution" to the problem. "
We are dead serious that we will not support any unnecessary killing of any animal species."
And although the SPCA would be allowed to continue trapping and to monitor the humaneness of the shootings, they had been been told not to return any trapped cats.
Les Underhill, director of UCT's avian demography unit that monitors the island's seabird populations, agreed that the shooting should be resumed immediately.
"This gives it a chance of completion before the winter rains commence and the vegetation becomes too thick to find cats easily."
jyeld@incape.co.za
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