City of Greater Dandenong voted for a 12-hr curfew, instead of the 24-hr curfew originally planned. CGD’s DAMP survey received 11 responses, their Cat Curfew Consultation received 356 responses - thank you! I attended the meeting, with an animal lawyer. There were only five people in the gallery - no residents were there for the Cat Curfew vote. City of Greater Dandenong still wants a 24-hr cat curfew - scheduled for review after the next Council election - if you know anyone in CGD please let them know. CGD did not answer my question on their anonymous, open across Australia, unverifiable survey. CGD Council says they are getting ‘more traps’ - more impoundments - more killing.
Community Cat Programs, the effective solution, do not work with curfews as Community Cats are homeless and outside at night. With curfews, both 12 and 24hr, the public are encouraged to trap, and this leads to greater impoundments, greater killing, less homes, and six times greater cost to all residents. CGD claims 57% are in favour of a cat curfew. Curfews, both 12 and 24 hrs, do not work - and void Community Cat Programs.
Dandenong Star News, the morning before vote, published Cat Curfew Loosened https://dandenong.starcommunity.com.au/news/2023-06-26/cat-curfew-loosened/ and in print hardcopy as Night Cat Curfew Tip.
Meeting video: https://www.greaterdandenong.vic.gov.au/council-meeting-26-june-2023 our questions are at the end of section 3, vote is 4.3.3. Minutes omitted reference links, and have errors, so Meeting Questions are below this Update - please check out Professor Jacquie Rand’s and Nichola Donovan’s new info.
Please share The Conversation new article reporting on Dr Jacquie Rand’s research, of the Australian Pet Welfare Foundation ‘Australian shelters and pounds kill 50,000 mostly healthy cats and kittens in a year. There’s a way to prevent this pointless killing’: https://theconversation.com/australian-shelters-and-pounds-kill-50-000-mostly-healthy-cats-and-kittens-in-a-year-theres-a-way-to-prevent-this-pointless-killing-201947
June 28th The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald https://www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/poison-shooting-robots-on-the-front-line-of-war-against-feral-cats-in-wa-20230628-p5dk4n.html reporting on Western Australia using 1080 poison on wild cats. 1080 is a cruel, and torturous death, and also kills many native animals. This 'Felixer' 1080 targets and kills dingo pups. In Victoria, Australia, 1080 is used on foxes, and Alpine dingoes, misdescribed as ‘wild dogs’ as not 100percent genetically pure blood, and it kills Wedge-tailed eagles, native marsupials and birds.
In 1972 the USA banned 1080 after it killed native animals and people. WA is wasting $7.6million of taxpayers money, ignoring scientific 'territoriality' & 'reproductive rebound’. Why are stated environmentalists killing our natives, and poisoning our environment, in their war on cats?.
Ban 1080 in Australia: https://www.ban1080.org.au/
When a homeless person’s animal is taken into Council Pounds it cannot be returned without a fixed address - Australia, Victoria. Branding suburban homeless cats as ‘feral’, Woinarski group’s Sarah Legge is continually quoted in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. City of Greater Dandenong Council claims ‘each domestic cat will kill around 75 animals per year.’ - Legge, Woinarski ANU. Who is actually the ‘invasive species’ killing Australian cats?
Animals 24/7, USA, alerted that Australian politics targets cats for power, spreading media misinformation, cruelty, and wasting money. Making homes harder for felines, renters, and the struggling.
Animals 24/7 USA on Australian cats:
2019: Greg Hunt, with John Woinarski, promising to kill two-million cats within a year: https://www.animals24-7.org/2019/05/12/how-killing-cats-helps-to-keep-aussie-liberal-party-in-power/
In 2015 AusGov knew that trapping, killing, curfews - fail: https://www.animals24-7.org/2015/04/11/culling-cats-increases-the-feral-population-australian-study-finds/
Conscience for Cats Save Cats, Save Wildlife Respect Felines
Questions asked 26th June ’23 Meeting. City of Greater Dandenong has omitted the weblinks, some wording, and punctuation in the Minutes.
Emeritus Professor Jacquie Rand:
Is Mayor Foster and each councillor committed to introducing science-based policies and by-laws for effective urban cat management.
Before voting on cat curfews, is Mayor Foster and each councillor prepared to read and consider the following published data and information?
1. Dandenong ranks in the worst quartile of councils for the proportion of impounded cats that are euthanased - 74% cats were killed in 2018-19. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/11/1771/pdf
2. Most of the cats killed are healthy and born in the last 6-12 months (Kerr 2018).
3. 90% of the cats impounded in Dandenong were not reclaimed by owners. Most have no identification, and no owners to contain them DAMP).
4. Based on data from other Victorian councils, mandated containment increases complaints, the number of cats impounded and killed, cost and exposure to mental health damage of staff at the Lost Dogs Home. (Rand 2023 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/6/1067
5. Curfews prevent resolution of the wandering cat issue because they create barriers to semi-owners taking ownership of the stray cat they are feeding - the key solution to significantly reducing unwanted kittens being born and wandering cats (Rand 2023)
6. Banyule introduced free sterilization for cats, and over three years decreased complaint calls by 64%, impoundments by 61% and euthanasia by 74%, as well as decreasing costs.
7. Three years after Yarra Ranges introduced mandated containment, complaint calls were still increased by 143% impoundments by 68% and euthanasia by 18%. httos://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/6/106
Nichola Donovan:
I am the president of Lawyers for Animals, but I am speaking here in an individual capacity because I also undertake quite a lot of cat rescue, including intervention in wild cat colonies and rehoming and rehabilitation of those cats.
There are two core scientific phenomena applicable to controlling cat populations and wildlife predation - ‘territoriality’ and ‘reproductive rebound'.
‘Territoriality’ causes cats to guard territory including all potential food (eg. wildlife) from other cats. Fully-fed and desexed pet cats have far less motivation to kill wildlife than fertile stray cats.
‘Reproductive rebound’ is the natural phenomenon whereby fertile stray cats increase when available food increases.
A 24-hour cat curfew leaves the territory (and food, including wildlife) previously guarded by pet cats, vacant for fertile stray cats. With more territory to hunt, more foodscraps and direct feed available (remembering that up to nine per cent of people feed cats that they do not own, daily): stray cats will bear more kittens, more often; and more of those kittens will survive to breed. They only need to be three months old to begin breeding.
Emeritus Prof. Rand reports that to achieve any long-term stray cat population reduction by killing, the minimum proportion of fertile stray cats that must be killed every 6mths (for 10yrs) is 30-50%. Currently only around two percent of stray cats in Greater Melbourne (so that is including Dandenong and all other Councils) are captured every six months. Most of those are kittens. It is time-intensive, expensive work.
Every Council in Greater Melbourne will need to catch & kill 15 to 25 times more fertile stray cats, every six months, to stop the stray cat population in Greater Dandenong increasing three-fold under a curfew. That is because of ‘rebound’ and because of ‘territoriality’.
Councillors, can you please advise why you plan to ignore the scientific facts of 'reproductive rebound' & 'territoriality' to support a cat curfew, & how you'll fund the extra 15-20% stray cat trap & kill to avoid a three-fold increase in the stray cat population?
Are Councillors aware that unsocialised stray cats can and are regularly tamed and socialised to become wonderful companion animals? I can attest to this after personally capturing and taming eight adult breeding aged cats, plus six of their kittens from a wild cat colony in Meadow Heights. It took many days to capture those cats - many nights, I should say - and a very experienced cat catcher helping me.
Ten of these cats were successfully rehomed, one was sadly killed when hit by a car in 2019, and I wound up adopting the two who were slowest to be tamed, and they are now wonderful, affectionate companions. So just in case people thought that wild cats were incapable of being socialised, it is simply not true and Maneki Neko Cat Rescue, through whom - under whose auspices I rescue, know this very well. They are the biggest rescue group in Victoria.
Ashlley Morgan - Shae:
1. Australian Pet Welfare Foundation evidence shows mandated containment does not work - it farms kittens to kill, places shelter-workers at suicide-risk as high as firefighters, and Banyule Council assessed, in Federal Report, that the trapping and killing costs six times more than a Community Cat Program.* Banyule Council assessed that their Community Cat Program total cost 2013-2020 was $60,000, as opposed to $397,500 that Banyule would have paid in cat pound contract in the same period.
City of Greater Dandenong states its aim is for 24-hr curfew, beginning with a night curfew. Evidence shows this has failed in Casey and Yarra Ranges.
Will Council consider instead a Community Cat Program at one-sixth of the cost, proven to lower stray cat numbers quickly, and lower complaints?
2. Council’s Cat Survey Consultation in March 2023, was open Australia-wide, allowing multiple responses from a person using different browsers, or different devices, anonymously.
How many of the respondents were anonymous, of those who were not anonymous what steps were taken to ensure they are legitimate, individual responses, for example: were the names and addresses checked against electoral rolls; if not, how is this a credible ‘community’ survey?
* Federal Inquiry into the problem of feral and domestic cats in Australia - Banyule Submission 141 pages 7-8. Also Australian Pet Welfare Foundation Submission 142 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Former_Committees/Environment_and_Energy/Feralanddomesticcats/Submissions
https://petwelfare.org.au/2022/09/02/key-issues-to-consider-related-to-mandated-24-7-cat-containment/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbK3R36Xjg
CGD’s expensive, killing, curfew is not law until Gazetted. Anyone can ask a Meeting Question online for the 24th July ’23 meeting, you do not have to attend to have it read out, recorded, replied: https://www.greaterdandenong.vic.gov.au/council-meetings/council-meetings-public-question-time City of Greater Dandenong Councillors have not made a decision based on evidence.