Kangaroo Island Cat Control Committee

Look at the size of this cat! It is called a Savannah, and is a cross between the African Serval wild cat and domestic cats. They can grow to 18kg in weight! Can you imagine the destruction if such animals escaped from captivity and became feral? Their greater size would enable predation on larger species than normal feral cats, and they would also consume a greater weight of wildlife. Introducing their genes into the current feral pool could produce a super feral. There is a move to import these animals into Australia, and as you might expect the Kangaroo Island Cat Control Committee strongly oppose this move. Read the government paper on a proposed ban on the importation of these cross breeds. Update: the Australian Government has banned the importation of the Savannah cats, see the news item below.

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News:

12/8/08   Savannah cat banned from importation into Australia
From the Australian Labor Party website:

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has banned the Savannah cat from being brought into Australia finding it poses an extreme risk to Australia's environment and biodiversity.

Mr Garrett used his powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to amend the Act's live import list to change the definition of domestic cat to rule out cats with the genes of the African wildcat, the Serval.

2/7/08   KICCC website redesign
Coinciding with the move to our new web address, we have embarked on a redesign of our website. We are retaining the Ned Kelly armour theme developed a couple of years ago, but simplifying the layout and using smaller images to improve page load times.

We appreciate any feedback you have on our activities.

2/7/08   Can the importation of Savannah cats into Australia be stopped?
These new super moggies, if accidentally or intentionally released into the wild, pose a serious threat to Australia's environment. Introduction to Kangaroo Island's feral pool would be catastophic, with no larger predators to bother them. They would prey on larger animals as well as the smaller ones, and consume more of them. They would presumably also co-host the sarco and toxo parasites that are such a huge menace to Kangaroo Island's sheep farms. The Kangaroo Island Cat Control Committee strongly oppose the importation of these animals into Australia, and urge the Federal Government to ban their importation, including tracking and disposing of any animals already imported.

Although cat control is normally a state and local government issue, the actual importation of exotic species is controlled by the Federal Government, so it is up to them to protect our borders against this potentially devastating pest species.

1/7/08   New web address for KICCC
The Kangaroo Island Cat Control Committee now has a new web address: www.kiccc.org.au. The website has been hosted for free by Charlieweb at kangaroo-island-world.com, but now we have our own domain. This comes at a time when our activities are ramping up again with the pending field trials of a newly developed cat control measure. We hope to report more on this news soon.

29/1/07   Bird flu in cats
A deadly strain of the bird flu virus has been found in cats in Indonesia, according to an article in the New Scientist. This has implications for greater possibility of infecting other mammals, including humans.

Extracts on our website Bird flu in cats

Full New Scientist article online