In August I spent a weeks holiday on Magnetic Island off Townsville on the Queensland coast. This pro-vided the opportunity to look at the results of the Cat Management Plan introduced there in 1997 subsequent to a survey conducted in 1995.

The principal ingredients of the Plan were;

• Council funded an initial microchip implantation of all domestic cats on the island. [While this was not compulsory any cat caught without identification would be considered a stray and put down.

• Residents were supplied with cat traps on demand for trapping on their own properties.

• Council began an intensive trapping regime on land owned or administered by them, particularly the refuse tips.

• All domestic cats to be spayed other wise if caught will be culled.

At the same time the National Parks staff started trapping along the tracks in the National Park which makes up 70% of this 5,000-hectare island.

In March 1999 the Townsville City Council conducted a follow up survey on the attitudes of the residents-dents after the Plan had been in place for 2 1/2 years. This subsequently became the subject of a paper presented at the Urban Animal Management National Conference on the Gold Coast in August 1999. I have had the opportunity to review the paper, survey and analysis but have had to write to the CEO of the Council for permission to obtain and utilise the report.

The results over the four years have been spectacular. In the whole week I was on the island I only saw one cat and that was on a resident’s property during the day. The demand for resident’s cat traps has decreased to almost zero and apart from a constant presence at the refuse tips the Council and National Park only trap as a result of sightings or cat sign.

The report highlights a growing problem with domestic dogs, particularly for ground nesting birds. As a result of this and the work carried out by DOC on Great Barrier illustrating the same problem it is important to incorporate dogs into the survey so that it is not specific to cats. Working backward from the 1999 Magnetic Island survey will ensure that our first survey asks the right questions. This way when a follow up survey is conducted there will be comparative information for analysis. Enlarging the parameters of the survey to include questions concern-concerning dogs will provide a good sense for attitudes of the Great Barrier public. As a result of the change it will be appropriate to leave the suggested changes to the dog by-law until the results of the survey are available.

Tony Bouzaid