Gone feral: can a cat containment policy save native wildlife?

Cat owner Jordan Reeves noticed a big difference in attitudes towards cats when he moved from rural New South Wales to urban Canberra 14 years ago.

In the country, “cats can just very much do whatever they want”, says Reeves.

“They would just be roaming, they wouldn’t be desexed a lot of the time. So, you’d end up with these properties or you go to farms and there’ll just be literally litters of cats everywhere.”

But in Canberra, they’re very much controlled, Reeves observed.

In the ACT, moggies born after 1 July 2022 must be contained to the owner’s premises 24 hours a day. In some suburbs, they must be contained regardless of age.

Policies like these are being introduced throughout the country, as it has become clear that the damage cats do to native wildlife is staggering.

Pets are integral to many Australian households, with more than 5 million domestic cats registered in 2022. But since colonisation, they’ve helped push more than 30 native animal species to extinction.

But Felis catus are a leading cause of deaths of native species in Australia, killing more than half a billion animals, including 323 million native animals every year.

To help combat this, experts say we need a “cultural shift” in the way we view responsible pet ownership, to include cat containment.

“We’ve all had the experience of someone’s pet roaming into our backyard … if someone’s dog did that people would freak out. So, it’s become culturally acceptable that people’s cats can roam around,” says Professor Euan Ritchie, Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at Deakin University.

“We definitely need a shift,” says Ritchie. “They do kill lots of animals, despite what their owners might say.”

Limiting them from roaming is slowly coming into effect across the country, as more than a third of local councils across Australia introduce cat containment or curfew rules.

Even though some people are opposed to cat containment, many others are starting to embrace it over the past decade for their cat’s welfare and for the protection of wildlife, says Jaana Dielenberg from the Biodiversity Council, an independent expert group founded by Australian universities to create evidence-based solutions to biodiversity issues.

“We love our cat, we enjoy his company, but I honestly don’t see why the lives of blue tongues, and birds, and skinks … aren’t just as important,” she says.

In late 2023, the Biodiversity Council conducted a survey of more than 3,400 Australians and found only 8% would oppose a cat containment policy.

This shift may in part be credited to programs such as the RSPCA and Zoos Victoria Safe Cat Safe Wildlife (SCSW) initiative, which encourages people to keep their cats contained to protect their pet but also native species.

This program promotes the safety of both pets and native species, says Lauren Paterson, from the RSPCA community outreach team.

“[It] wasn’t a negative campaign about cats”, says Paterson, “it was a positive behaviour-change for people who love cats and … wildlife.”

The program targets groups who have the most control over cat behaviour  – cat owners, vets and councils  – by asking them to join the SCSW community, and then providing information on how to ensure their cat is living a happy life while contained, says Paterson.

According to the program’s data, 145 groups such as councils and vets, and 31,505 individual people have signed up to be a SCSW community member.

Even though Reeves supports containment and uses tactics to keep his cats happy indoors, he finds the costs of cat containment and the access to finding solutions frustrating.

Read more: The damage done by a feral cat

When you look into the options to build containment cages, there’s only a few different options and they’re very expensive to set up, says Reeves.

“So, the only thing I don’t like about [the containment policies] is it would probably cost you thousands of dollars to make your yard a containment area, and then it’s really ugly because your yards just going to be a big cage.”

Helping people cover the cost of keeping cats contained when the new policy comes into play is an issue that councils need to deal with, says Dienlenberg.

“There could be a rebate available to people to pay maybe part of the costs of installing window screens or installing a cat run,” she says.

Some councils are already adopting this approach. Blue Mountains residents were eligible for a $400 subsidy to install enclosures on their NSW property last year to support transitioning their cats inside.

But these costs wouldn’t deter Reeves from containing his beloved pet cats for their health and safety, and for the protection of wildlife in his area.

“I’ve really noticed since they’ve brought in the cat containment laws, that there are
actually more birds around, you can actually see the difference. Like native budgies and stuff that I’ve never seen before.”

“If you go to a different part of Canberra, where that rule has only come in recently, there’ll still be heaps of cats that are able to roam around because they were born before that cut- off date,” Reeves says.

“You just don’t see as many birds.”

This story by Charlotte Walkling is part of the Gone Feral series co-published with The Citizen, a publication of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

8 Oct: This article originally quoted Jaana Dielenberg from the Biodiversity Council, saying she was in favour of subsidies for “cameras.” This was an error and should have read: …subsidies for … “cat runs.” The error has been changed.

Other articles in this series include fire ants. deer, kelp and brumbies.