A nationwide 24/7 lockdown for cats is just around the corner in Australia, officials believe, as figures reveal that billions of unique native animals fall prey to feline hunters annually.
“The latest statistics show that every year they [pet cats] predate more than 180 native animals; that’s just one pet cat,” Dean Huxley, an operations director at a wildlife hospital in Perth, told ABC.
The total number of kills for one feral cat stands at over 740 per year, according to the 2019 book ‘Cats in Australia: Companion and Killer’, which combined hundreds of studies on the issue.
This means that some three million mammals, two million reptiles, and one million marsupials become victims of cats every single day in Australia. And, according to Huxley, the death toll will only keep growing if something isn’t done.