Cats need containment
This morning for the first time in years I looked out of my bedroom window at a grevillea which is usually alive with eastern spine bills and New Holland honey eaters competing for the nectar in its flowers and there were none. I looked further to where our block meets the bush, and where we usually also see red rumped finches, yellow robins, blue wrens and more, and there was a large very happy looking cat. We have new neighbours who have a free roaming cat even though our gardens back onto the national park.
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Surely all of us take great joy from the wonderful and varied bird life of the Jervis Bay region. Surely, too, it is time Shoalhaven City Council established some rules to regulate the inevitably predatory activities of cats, particularly on bush and park adjacent blocks. The evidence is clear about the devastation domestic cats and their close cousins, the ferals, do to birds and small native wildlife.
Policy changes could be made immediately to be effective over time. It would be quite unfair, for example, to require old cats used to roaming free to be contained. However, it would be quite possible, and possible to do so immediately, to require all cats to be contained after dark and overnight with a kitty litter and containment in a laundry or kitchen for owners who do not want them elsewhere.
For properties that abut parkland or bush, any new young animal should be contained from the outset in RSPCA approved cat parks, so that cats can have their fresh air. Some suggest this is cruel. Animals who have known nothing different and get plenty of care and attention from their owners will be perfectly content.
We are bird lovers and we are cat lovers. Our cats have never been allowed to roam free but spend outside time in their cat park and on their leads in the garden when we are there. We have developed our gardens to attract birds and get great joy from them.
It's time Council demonstrated its environment credentials including by turning its attention to this matter. Done carefully, no cat or cat owner will be disadvantaged.
J. Verrier, Vincentia
Explosive hazards
As the SCR article about the history of Tianjara put into words, reports, the contamination of the once heavily used former range by unexploded ordnance (UXO) was gazetted on the Defence Department’s National UXO website in 2012. In April 2012 the danger of UXO on the former Tianjara Artillery Range was first generally advised to the public. That promulgation was the result of representation to the Minister for Defence by then federal member Jo Gash.
The 2012 Defence advice was that UXO contamination extended across the entire former Tianjara range -now Morton National Park. Contrary to that Defence advice, since at least 2007 and still today NSW Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) advises that UXO contamination exists only in the north of the former range. NPWS maps and those of the 1/25000 series covering Morton NP provide the same incorrect advice. It is not clear how NPWS has determined the authority’s in-house limits of UXO contamination as these are variously promulgated.
In August 2014 stakeholders including representatives from RFS and bushwalking organisations were advised by NPWS of an ongoing Defence and NPWS review which included a draft map showing revised boundaries that had been determined by Defence analysis. However no revision of NPWS procedure and maps have been seen as an outcome of this work. The NPWS advice about the hazards and risk presented by UXO remains unaltered and different to that promulgated by Defence.
There remains an obligation for visitors and workers within the park to be advised of to the public the actual hazards and risks including those presented by UXO. That process is not in place. Your article does not make that important point clear.
