Feral cat farewells: The effectiveness of removing feral cats from the island of Schiermonnikoog using TNRC

Description

Domestic cats are worldwide loved pets for many people, but they are also known to disturb and kill millions of prey species each year. Although the ecological impact of cats is increasingly becoming clear, effective management actions controlling cats are still developing in the Netherlands. One method that is considered to work effectively and has been applied worldwide, is the TNRC method (Trap-Neuter-Relocate-Care). In this talk, I will discuss the effectiveness of the TNRC method for feral cat removal on the island of Schiermonnikoog. With the use of camera-traps, we first estimated a feral cat population of ca. 50 adult individuals and defined so-called ‘cat-hotspots’. At these locations, livetraps were placed to capture and remove feral cats from February 2022 onwards. So far, 53 individual feral cats have been captured and removed, including one-third being kittens. However, our camera-trap images still reveal the presence of at least 20 individual cats that need to be captured. Completely removing the feral cat population using the TNRC method is challenging, particularly due to the fast production rates of cats, but also due to free-roaming owned pet cats by people from the village. Hence, a variety of effective conservation management actions are needed to effectively reduce the impact of cats and to protect threatened prey species.

Period	14-Feb-2024
Event title	Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2024
Event type	Conference
Conference number	16
Organiser	Netherlands Ecological Research Network (NERN)
Location	Lunteren, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National