Australia is trying to kill its cat population by dropping poisonous sausages from planes

Australia is waging war, but it has an unlikely opponent.

The Australian government is trying to kill two million free roaming cats by 2020 in an effort to rid the country of its feral cat population, reports CNN. The country's total feral cat population is estimated to be between two and six million.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Officials are carrying out the killings by dropping sausages from airplanes into areas where the cats are known to be living, reports Insider. The sausages, which are laced with an ingredient deadly to animals, are cooked with flavors most appealing to cats, per The New York Times.

"They've got to taste good. They are the cat's last meal," Shane Morse, who works with the sausages, told the Times.

But despite being a conservation effort, many conservationists disavow the killings. Tim Doherty, a conservation ecologist from Deakin University in Australia, told CNN that the plan is based on shaky science, and he said it only helps if the killed felines were already living in an area where they threatened native species.

Explore More
Marianne Dodson

Marianne is The Week’s Social Media Editor. She is a native Tennessean and recent graduate of Ohio University, where she studied journalism and political science. Marianne has previously written for The Daily Beast, The Crime Report, and The Moroccan Times.