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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 690 ..

level of consultation that there might have been if the issue had been pursued by government. That perhaps is a weakness, but time is of the essence. The land is on our forward land release program, and it will be sold. We could say, “Let’s delay the release whilst we consult further on a cat policy,” but we are constrained by the timetable.

The purpose of the discussion paper was to examine the impact on nature reserves of domestic cats, particularly in the planning for those new suburbs, and it identified the developments of Forde and Bonner as particularly sensitive. In the last year, we introduced an additional 700 hectares of high quality yellow box/red gum grassy woodland at Gooroo into the nature reserve system. In terms of foregone revenue, we value that reserve at about $300 million.

In the last budget, we committed $1.6 million to manage the new reserves that were announced last year. This is a significant commitment to the environment. We have just completed, and will be releasing in the next couple of weeks, the final draft of the lowland woodland conservation strategy, which deals with our commitment to the conservation of those areas. We are making a major commitment to the protection and conservation of those woodlands at Mulligans and Gooroo.

I am advised that in Mulligans Flat alone 150 different species of bird have been recorded, and many of them use Mulligans and Gooroo as a breeding ground. The reserves provide a very important habitat for the resident bird species listed as vulnerable under ACT threatened species legislation: the hooded robin, the brown treecreeper, the varied sittella and the white-winged triller.

The Canberra Ornithologists Group have provided significant input into the discussion paper, which is at the heart of the issue we are debating today, and have documented the decline in these four species since surveys began in 1995. Small numbers of both the hooded robin and the brown treecreeper are still in the reserves, and we are all concerned that these vulnerable species continue to have those suitable conditions. Those two species are ground feeders and are known to build their nests very close to the ground, so they are particularly vulnerable to depredation by cats.

A comprehensive study of domestic cat behaviour undertaken in Canberra in 1998 by D G Barratt showed that approximately 75 per cent of all domestic cats in Canberra hunt. It also showed that cats are opportunistic when hunting. In other words, they do not discriminate when choosing their prey; they take whatever is available. The study concluded that the proportion of native species taken by cats would be higher in natural environments where native species mostly occur. Estimates from that study in 1998 indicate that cats depredate approximately 480,000 animals in the Canberra urban environment every year, including up to 27 per cent of the standing crop of native birds in any one year.

In addition to some of the vulnerable bird species in these areas, the reserve at Mulligans also contains the very rare black form of the shingleback, echidna, eight different frog species, 11 other mammal species and 14 other reptile species. We all accept absolutely the need to protect those. In relation to this discussion paper, in their submission to the government, the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee favoured requiring cat owners to have appropriately designed cat enclosures to restrict cat activity to their own property. That is the substance of the motion for my amendment.

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