The City of Mandurah is looking for a contractor to take down its hit list of feral animals wreaking havoc in its parks and reserves.
Tender documents for the years-long assault targeting feral animals including rabbits, foxes and cats have been revealed.
They call for contractors to control cats at 14 locations, including Dawesville, Island Point, Tim’s Thicket, Town Beach, Marlee Reserve, Gordon Road waste transfer station and the fairy tern breeding site at Pyramids Beach.
If a fairy tern breeding colony establishes at the beach, the contractor will be expected to carry out more cat trapping during the breeding season from November to January.
Cats targeting the fairy tern colony could even be euthanised as part of the program if specific requirements are met.
Rabbits will be targeted over hundreds of hectares at 24 locations, including Silver Sands and San Remo sand dunes, Tim’s Thicket, Bells Block and Caddadup reserve.
Control methods may include warren fumigation and destruction, ground shooting, baiting, cage trapping and use of the RHDV1-K5 rabbit haemorrhagic virus.
The brutal virus kills the rabbits within a day or two of contracting the infection, causing liver damage and internal bleeding.
Fox control also includes shooting, caging, den fumigation and destruction, and soft-jaw trapping.
Foxes will be targeted at 23 locations over hundreds of hectares, also including Tim’s Thicket.
The city is also asking the chosen contractor to perform reproductive necropsies on rabbit carcasses and post-mortem dietary investigations on foxes.
The contractor is also expected to provide ad hoc services including killing swooping magpies posing a risk to public safety, galahs inhabiting cockatoo breeding hollow and tubes, corellas causing damage to city infrastructure or invading known conservation significant species habitat, pigeons causing damage or being a nuisance on city property or infrastructure; and feral pigs.
It was not disclosed how much the city expects to pay for the program that could run for as long as four years, as no budget or estimated annual hours were provided in the tender documents.