Culling feral cats sees birds return to remote Bass Strait island

Birds return to Little Dog Island in Bass Strait after feral cats eradicated Tue 2 Jun 2026 at 5:23am In short: Little Dog Island, which forms part of Bass Strait's Furneaux Group, has been declared free of feral cats after a successful eradication program. The remote island is a traditional 'safe haven' for birdlife. What's next? Penguins have been spotted on the island for the first time in decades. 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. 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. But birdlife on the "spectacular" 83-hectare island has long been "taking a hammering" from feral cats. 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. "Mice would have probably come when Europeans came… or when livestock were brought to the island," she said. "And as soon as you've got mice, if people are living there, they usually bring cats with them. "Particularly things like shearwaters, which are seasonal … they take quite a hammering from the cats." 'They're coming back' During the winters of 2022 and 2023, Dr Robinson and her team set out to trap and remove feral cats from Little Dog Island. She said 21 cats were caught and humanely euthanised during that period. "Now on 83 hectares, that's a lot of cats," Dr Robinson said. "Clearly they would have been doing a lot of damage." Various monitoring activities — including thermal imaging, scent detection dogs and motion sensing cameras — have since recorded no sign of feral cats on the island. Further, for the first time since the 1980s, penguins have been sighted. "Cats would have been killing penguins — and now they're coming back," Dr Robinson said. 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. "They're also really predatory when they are on a seabird island,"she said. The eradication program was funded by the Commonwealth and delivered by Tasmania's Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Dr Robinson said the success at Little Dog Island boded well for other feral cat eradication efforts across the country. In 2018, the Western Australian government declared Dirk Hartog Island free from feral cats — 400 years after the Dutch explorer and his crew first set foot there. "It's always a great result to have an island free of feral predators… especially an island that's important for seabirds," she said. "Once you get them off, they're unlikely to come back on." Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said it was a positive outcome for Little Dog Island. "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.