Simon Lauder reported this story on Thursday, July 16, 2015 08:25:32

ASHLEY HALL: We've had the war on drugs and the war on terror. Today the Federal Government will declare war on cats, feral cats that is.



Simon Lauder reports.



SIMON LAUDER: The endangered Norfolk Island green parrot is just one Australian animal at great risk from cats.



Joel Christian is a park ranger on the island.



JOEL CHRISTIAN: Fledglings that we were monitoring with radio trackers - and we've actually found the trackers on birds that have been shredded by cats, so it's quite devastating when they are so few green parrots around.



SIMON LAUDER: So it sounds like feral cats could actually be responsible for the extinction of that species?



JOEL CHRISTIAN: Yes, they could well be the final straw.



SIMON LAUDER: It's been a year since the Federal Government appointed Gregory Andrews as Australia's first Threatened Species Commissioner.



Today he's in Melbourne with the Environment Minister Greg Hunt, preparing to launch a national strategy.



(Sound of a cat screeching)



Mr Andrews says feral cats are the single biggest threat to Australia's mammals.



GREGORY ANDREWS: Of the 29 mammals that we've lost to extinction, feral cats are implicated in 28 out of those 29 extinctions, and over 120 Australian animals are at risk of extinction from feral cats.



So the scientific evidence is crystal clear that they're the biggest threat.



SIMON LAUDER: It is an enormous problem, the feral cats, it's gone unaddressed, you could argue for hundreds of years. How can that be turned around?



GREGORY ANDREWS: It has been a problem that's been neglected. So feral cats have spread across our country over the last 200 years.



Today Minister Hunt is declaring war on feral cats and he's asked me to take charge of that program.



SIMON LAUDER: Can you let me in on some of the weapons that will be used in this war?



GREGORY ANDREWS: Both baiting and other initiatives - but also a new web-based and mobile phone app-based tool that the community can use to get mobilised.



It's very important to emphasis too that we don't hate cats. We just can't tolerate the damage that they're doing anymore to our wildlife.



SIMON LAUDER: And, of course, feral cats come from domestic cats and there's a lot of them wandering the streets of towns and cities. Do you think more needs to be done at that level?



GREGORY ANDREWS: I choose not to have a cat but I'm not telling other people in Australia what they should do.



But what I am calling on all Australians to do is be responsible pet owners and today at the summit, we will be asking state and territory ministers to take ambitious moves on to regulate cat ownership, cat containment, desexing and micro-chipping to reduce the relationship or the infection of the domestic cat population into the feral cat population.



ASHLEY HALL: Threatened Species Commissioner, Gregory Andrews ending Simon Lauder's report.