{"id":708847,"date":"2026-06-01T23:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/708847\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T23:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:56:12","slug":"birds-return-to-little-dog-island-in-bass-strait-after-feral-cats-eradicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/708847\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds return to Little Dog Island in Bass Strait after feral cats eradicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penguins have been sighted on a remote Bass Strait island for the first time in decades after the successful eradication of feral cats and possums.<\/p>\n

Little Dog Island forms part of the Furneaux Group, a collection of islands north-east of Tasmania, and every year plays host to an estimated half a million nesting shearwaters.<\/p>\n

But birdlife on the “spectacular” 83-hectare island has long been “taking a hammering” from feral cats.<\/p>\n

Dr Sue Robinson, an invasive species biologist with Biosecurity Tasmania, said the pests would likely have been introduced to the island when it was previously used for grazing livestock.<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

The 83-hectare island is in Bass Strait, off Tasmania’s north-east coast.\u00a0 (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)<\/p>\n

“Mice would have probably come when Europeans came\u2026 or when livestock were brought to the island,” she said.<\/p>\n

“And as soon as you’ve got mice, if people are living there, they usually bring cats with them.<\/p>\n

“Particularly things like shearwaters, which are seasonal \u2026 they take quite a hammering from the cats.”‘They’re coming back’<\/p>\n

During the winters of 2022 and 2023, Dr Robinson and her team set out to trap and remove feral cats from Little Dog Island.<\/p>\n

She said 21 cats were caught and humanely euthanised during that period.<\/p>\n

“Now on 83 hectares, that’s a lot of cats,” Dr Robinson said.<\/p>\n

“Clearly they would have been doing a lot of damage.”<\/p>\n

Various monitoring activities \u2014 including thermal imaging, scent detection dogs and motion sensing cameras \u2014 have since recorded no sign of feral cats on the island.<\/p>\n

\"Little<\/p>\n

Little Dog Island is in the Furneaux Group.\u00a0 (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)<\/p>\n

Further, for the first time since the 1980s, penguins have been sighted.<\/p>\n

“Cats would have been killing penguins \u2014 and now they’re coming back,” Dr Robinson said.<\/p>\n

More than one hundred possums were also removed by Dr Robinson’s team, and she was confident they had now been eradicated from the island.<\/p>\n

“They’re also really predatory when they are on a seabird island,” she said.<\/p>\n

The eradication program was funded by the Commonwealth and delivered by Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment.<\/p>\n

Dr Robinson said the success at Little Dog Island boded well for other feral cat eradication efforts across the country.<\/p>\n

\"Short<\/p>\n

Little Dog Island is a known breeding ground for shearwaters.\u00a0 (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Western Australian government declared Dirk Hartog Island free from feral cats \u2014 400 years after the Dutch explorer and his crew first set foot there.<\/p>\n

“It’s always a great result to have an island free of feral predators\u2026 especially an island that’s important for seabirds,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Once you get them off, they’re unlikely to come back on.”<\/p>\n

Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said it was a positive outcome for Little Dog Island.<\/p>\n

“A coordinated approach like this to feral animal management maximises control efforts, increases information sharing and drives down negative impacts on our farmers and producers and the environment,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penguins have been sighted on a remote Bass Strait island for the first time in decades after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[257449,49,48,257450,37322,257448,257447,222335,66,323],"class_list":["post-708847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bass-strait","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-eradication","tag-feral-cats","tag-furneaux-group","tag-little-dog-island","tag-pest-management","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}