PHCC has been successful in our Feral Cat Management Grant Application!  The Defending Dryandra – Feral Hotspots Project will be delivered over 3 years and will involve targeted feral cat control by a pest animal control contractor and camera monitoring at known feral cat hotspots on properties surrounding Dryandra Woodland National Park (NP).

The project will receive $183,865 of funding and aims to reduced predation pressure from feral cats for key threatened species including numbats and woylies to help maintain or improve their populations, reduced disease risk from feral cats to livestock, use of technology to monitor feral species in real time and raise awareness of threats from feral cat and best practice management.

On ground activities commenced in late May with multiple monitoring cameras set on properties near Dryandra Woodland NP. The results from these cameras will determine where we set up the 4G monitoring cameras, these 4G cameras will then send a notification to the pest animal control contractor when fauna is sighted allowing for more targeted feral cat control.

Feral cat control has also begun including trapping and ground shooting. The first feral cat culled as part of the project was a massive 7.1kg, that feral cats would have eaten hundreds of native fauna over its life time. All feral cat culls will be recorded into Feralscan and a DNA samples taken for future studies. If you’d like to read the previous study of feral cat DNA Analysis you can read the DBCA report funded by PHCC here https://peel-harvey.org.au/phcc_publications/science-research/

Without the support from and involvement of local landholders this project would not be possible, thank you to everyone involved for helping to project Dryandra’s threatened fauna. To find out more about the Defending Dryandra Project you can read the Project Summary here https://peel-harvey.org.au/project_category/feral-animal-management/

Monitoring camera set up to capture feral cat movement between farmland and Dryandra Woodland National Park

The Defending Dryandra – Feral Hotspots Project is supported by funding from the Western Australian Government.

We acknowledge the Noongar people as Traditional Custodians of this land and pay our respects to all Elders past and present