This is a summary of one view that was presented to the NSW Inquiry Management of Cat Populations. During the hearing 1 April 2025, Stephanie Bates Westie Cat Support Services raised her concerns including the impact of groups, such as Invasive Species and the Threatened Species Commissioner that provide overstated estimates and significant negative consequences of cats which are published in a trail of repeated misinformation, leading to cruelty to cats.
We provide summaries and links to the full documents.
- Summary of WCSS concerns raised at the hearing 1 April 2025
- Summary of WCSS Answers to Questions On Notice
- Transcript of Hearing 1 April 2025
- WCSS Response
Summary of WCSS concerns raised at the hearing 1 April 2025
Stephanie Bates’ Westie Cat Support Services opening statement, included the following highlighted views (refer to a copy of the hearing transcript in this blog).
“I think there need to be some amendments to do with community members taking it upon themselves to trap cats—whether owned or unowned—and the investigation of this practice, the penalties for this practice and who is responsible for monitoring this practice. Is it the RSPCA cruelty inspectors? Is it a council animal ranger? Who is it? Is it an AWL inspector? The role and powers of the council need to be clearly defined and ascertained. My approach generally to this inquiry is coming from an animal welfare perspective, not necessarily threatened species protection in urban areas—or indeed other species protection in other areas. I also think that there’s a paucity of research on domestic and urban cats—owned, unowned and community—in urban areas. Even in the threat abatement plan, it’s stated that they’re talking about non-urban cats, yet they’re trying to extrapolate the data for urban cats and talk about urban cats in the same sentence, pretty much.
It’s quite ridiculous. We do need more solid, substantive and well-done research on urban cats. At the moment, it’s not really there. There’s a lot of crazy statistics put out there. The ANU, in 2023, stated that roaming pet cats kill 66 million native animals each year in Sydney. I would question that. There’s also not very much talk about what species are actually killing and exactly how many. A lot of their information is based on anecdotal reports from wildlife organisations. However, the anecdotal evidence given by people who actually rescue and TNR cats, for some bizarre reason, is never taken into account. That’s probably because they don’t even talk to us, so it’s great to have this investigation and this Committee.”
WCSS views, concerns and recommendations during the hearing session included the following.
“Certainly, particular lobby groups, like the Invasive Species Council, are very official, such as the Threatened Species Commissioner, have been heavily involved in lobbying, propagandising and, especially the Invasive Special Council, seeking funding. A lot of their propagandising is done on social media and a lot of it, I think, is having an actual negative impact on the safety of cats. I think there’s definitely an increase in demonisation.”
“With the mandatory containment, people think they’ve got a right, “Oh, this cat’s not on their property. They’re not contained. Good. I’m going to trap this cat and then I’m going to do what I like with this cat. I’m going to dump them in a suburb that’s 10 suburbs away. I’m going to kill them, or I’m going to take them to the pound, or I’m going to ring the ranger and they’re going to be taken to the pound”—in some sort of utopic nirvana of what needs to be done.”
“The problem with that is most of them don’t even contact the council rangers or the pounds about these cats. It would be interesting to correlate statistics of cat cruelty with what was going on in those councils—for example, the Yarra council. Having said that, there is a lot of animal cruelty that the RSPCA or the AWL
inspectorate will not investigate, whether it’s about resource allocation or the probability of being able to prosecute. I’m not sure, but I’d be very interested to see. Certainly anecdotally, and from TNRers’ and rescuers’ experiences on the ground, the amount of cat abuse has increased in the last two to three years in what we’re seeing
on the streets and on private properties.”
Towards the end of the hearing session, WCSS provided the following.
“My vision is that colonies will always exist. I think it’s incredibly unrealistic to suggest that they won’t, or that they shouldn’t exist, because you’re always going to have people in society that do not desex their cats, do not microchip their cats, dump their cats, people that are cruel to cats and dump owned or
otherwise cats. Like I said in my submission, TNR is but one management strategy to deal with a public and private animal issue. You’ve got two options. You either kill the lot of them, which is what Professor Sarah Legge and others suggest, or you start doing TNR and you have responsible colonies as a way to humanely manage. Cats on the streets are always going to exist, particularly in certain suburbs, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous. You can try to mass cull them, but you’re still going to have more cats emerging, because people will still do irresponsible things. I also think the education of the public is limited. You can educate till the cows come home with focused education about responsible pet ownership, but you will still have people being irresponsible.”
Summary of WCSS Answers to Questions On Notice
At the end of the hearing session, the following was raised with WCSS.
“Ms SUE HIGGINSON: Can I ask one last thing on notice? Ms Bates, you made a number of statements
about your understanding and observation that the Invasive Species Council and its propaganda—I think you referred to it as propaganda—is responsible for the increase in cruelty to animals. If you could provide the Committee any evidence or anything to suggest that’s the case, that would be of assistance.”
The following is included in the answer to question on notice. The document provided may be downloaded at the end of this article.
“I provide the following facts and factors, and examples as evidence of the links between Invasive Species Council (ISC) activities, specifically social media posts and website information, that appear as misleading information that overstates the impacts of cats. As a cat rescuer I believe this is fostering cruelty towards cats.”
“Publishing flawed views is ethically dubious and may breach social licensing obligations for organisations that are often assisted with funding by our governments (taxpayers) and donations from citizens/ community members. The impacts of flaws in overstated impacts and significant negative terms become highlighted in the unmoderated comments against cats which include forms of violence towards cats.
“Assessed examples as evidence [examples are located in the detailed document]
A small range of the examples from traditional and social media is provided where includes:
- overstated impacts and misleading information is provided by ISC and others,
- estimates are interpreted/ presented as “facts”,
- the use of demonising language is used to leverage negative emotions,
- the same original misleading item is reproduced by others, often where no improvements are included with evidence/ proof nor context,
- the “flooding” of media/ websites with the same or similar misleading items,
- angry and violent social media comments against cats by the public/ followers which are not moderated, including actions taken by the public.”
“The ISC and cohort cat impact articles are seldom in context of other significant factors. It
appears national generalisations are preferred to present a dramatic view that does not match
evidence in separate locations across our nation. These items do not include: land clearing
(habitat loss), climate change impacts (bushfires, floods, droughts), and impacts from other
invasive species.”
“Community cat rescuers and carers are volunteers from a range of career backgrounds. The flawed views are a form of secondary trauma that rescuers experience alongside the cases of physical cruelty to cats. I strongly recommended that a relationship is established between the NSW state government, councils and community cat rescuers/ carers, with One Welfare solutions to proactively minimise the impacts of cats, and reduce the impacts to wildlife.”
It is noted that in the examples of evidence provided, the Inquiry committee has heavily redacted the specific words in the following item:
The Guardian Nov 2023 re cats from Australian Wildlife Conservancy Trevor Bauer & Biodiversity Council ANU Sarah Legge media item: “From beloved pet to biodiversity villain: what now for Australia’s cats?”
In the lead up to the end of consultation of the draft Threat Abatement Plan, there were several articles in media, published it appears to promote all cats as “villains” and which proposed just two categories being pet (owned) and feral cats.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/12/from-beloved-pet-to-biodiversity-villain-what-now-for-australias-cats
LRC 