Bardot slams Australian plan to cull 2 million feral cats
Print Edition
French actress Brigitte Bardot has condemned an Australian plan to cull 2 million feral cats, blamed for wreaking havoc on native animals, to stop them further harming vanishing populations.
Feral cats have been identified as the main culprit behind Australia’s high rate of mammal extinction, with more than 10 percent of species wiped out since Europeans settled here two centuries ago.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt has said the advice he has received is that the cats number 20 million across the country and devour countless native animals every night.
“They are tsunamis of violence and death for Australia’s native species,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week.
Hunt said a target of eradicating two million feral cats had been set for 2020, in addition to creating feral-free enclosures to aid the recovery of birds and mammals among other measures.
The government has stressed the eradication of cats will be carried out humanely, but Bardot urged the government to reconsider the plan which she said was “appalling” to the international community.
“This animal genocide is inhumane and ridiculous. In addition to being cruel, killing these cats is absolutely useless since the rest of them will keep breeding,” she said in the English translation of the open letter to Hunt.
Bardot, who said the money set aside to destroy the animals would be better spent on setting up a large-scale sterilization campaign, said Australia’s public image was being hurt by its culling of animals.
Earlier this year officials said that close to 700 koalas had been killed in southeastern Australia because overpopulation led to the animals starving, while feral camels and wild horses have been culled in the Outback to stop them destroying land.
“Your country is sullied by the blood of millions of innocent animals so please, don’t add cats to this morbid record,” Bardot wrote.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said that the culling of animals had been proven in the past to be ineffective and called on the government to look for long-term, non-lethal solutions including suppressing the cats’ fertility.
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