Recently published findings from analysis completed in an Australian suburban area, highlight that many pet cats do not hunt and for those that do, there is likely much less an impact on wildlife than we have been led to believe. These published findings are more robust and reliable than previous decades old data and assumptions that have been used for claims of extreme impacts. The context of the impact of pet cats on wildlife needs to consider other contributing factors that arise from urbanisation, and be practical in terms of the wildlife that exists in these areas.
We seek more reasonable conversations and One Welfare solutions for proactively increasing pet cat containment and addressing issues of abandoned cats through initiatives for cats to stay with their owners.
Birds are Still Singing in Our Suburbs: Contemporary Hunting Data for Pet Cats in Urban Australia recently published study
Jacquie Rand, Karthick Sharma, Hung Hei Ng, Kate J. Dutton-Regester https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202609.1612
LRC videos include highlights with quotes, we encourage people to read the report when it is published.
LRC video of key highlights of the published findings of the Birds are still singing in our suburbs
Valuable quotes from the study
We strongly suggest everyone views the complete study document. Here’s our selection of a small number of valuable quotes. We recommend if copying these you recognise the authors and/or link to the study source and ensure you respect copyright and intellectual property.
From the Abstract single paragraph, we have included key points of interest and “spaced” these.
“Our study analyzed questionnaire data from 2,405 owned and semi-owned cats enrolled in a community sterilization program in lower-income suburbs of Ipswich, Queensland, between 2022 and 2025. Questionnaire completion was required for enrolment, reducing self-selection based specifically on an interest in cat hunting or wildlife.”
“Of 2,392 cats with hunting information, 77% were reported never to hunt and 23% to hunt sometimes or often. Even among cats with outdoor access, 58% were not reported to hunt. Among cats reported to catch prey, insects and rodents were most common, while bird captures were least common and generally low in number.”
“National predation estimates were calculated using observed hunting prevalence, prey composition and prey counts observed in this study population, with published correction factors applied for prey not observed by owners.”
“Median-based estimates were 0.38 million birds, 3.29 million mammals and 4.07 million reptiles annually, and for birds, the estimated rate averaged across all cats (hunters and non-hunters) was 0.10 birds per cat per year.”
“Our estimates for birds were 161 to 311 times lower than previously published Australian estimates, which exceed the estimated urban bird population of 11 million and annual turnover of approximately 3.6 million birds.”
“These findings demonstrate substantial variation in hunting behavior among pet cats, and show that national predation estimates are strongly influenced by the underlying data and assumptions used in extrapolation.”
From the Conclusion section, we found these partial quotes of most interest.
“…our findings challenge broad claims about the scale of pet cat predation in urban Australia and show that the impacts of pet cats in cities are context-dependent… interpreted alongside stronger drivers of wildlife outcomes in cities, including habitat quality and urbanization”
“Humane, evidence-based policy should therefore focus on practical, achievable measures such as sterilization and realistic containment support, rather than relying on outdated and generalized assumptions about all pet cats.”
