Does aerial baiting for controlling feral cats in a heterogeneous landscape confer benefits to a threatened native meso-predator?

ABSTRACT: Introduced mammalian predators can have devastating impacts on recipient ecosystems and disrupt native predator-prey relationships. Feral cats (Felis catus) have been implicated in the decline and extinction of many Australian native species and developing effective and affordable methods to control them is a national priority. While there has been considerable progress in the lethal control of feral cats, effective management at landscape scales has proved challenging. Justification of the allocation of resources to feral cat control programs requires demonstration of the conservation benefit baiting provides to native species susceptible to cat predation. Here, we examined the effectiveness of a landscape-scale Eradicat® baiting program to protect threatened northern quolls (Dasyurus hal

SUBMITTER: Palmer R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8104397 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature