The Scott Coastal Plain (SCP) is a unique and special place loved to those that farm there and those that travel and holiday in the national park. It is also a special place for the Wadandi-Pibulmun people since ancient times and is home to threatened ecological communities of both flora and fauna (including the Australasian Bittern). It is essential that this area of high biodiversity and cultural value and highly productive farm land is preserved and cared for.
Feral cats pose an increasingly large threat to the biodiversity and cultural values of the
Scott Coastal Plain. In particular the Gingilup-Jasper wetland system which is a nationally important and culturally significant wetland, the whole of the Scott River system which is a registered Aboriginal heritage site and the Kybra rock site which is a very significant and special registered Aboriginal-heritage site.
Our Feral Cat Focus project is essential to ensure the continuity of control and protection of the Scott Coastal Plain by monitoring and management, their impacts on the Scott Coastal Plain will be minimised.
The Scott Coastal Plain contains two nationally important wetlands, a threatened ecological community that all support a number of threatened or priority native fauna species under threat from feral cats. Through a strategic monitoring effort in their current feral pig control program, the LBLCDC have identified the need for a collaborative, strategic, multi-year control program in order to protect the area.
Through-out our Feral Cat Focus Project, we will work collaboratively with the Lower Blackwood Vertebrate Pest Management Group (LBVPMG), landholders, plantation companies, DBCA, DPIRD, Traditional Owners and local government to undertake priority feral cat control work to protect the Scott Coastal Plain (SCP).
Over the last 3 years the Lower Blackwood LCDC and the LBVPMG have been implementing a State NRM funded strategic feral pig monitoring and trapping program and through this program, feral cats were identified as a threat to the fauna in the SCP. This project will work alongside the current Feral Pig Focus project by; maintaining the existing monitoring sites to maximise data quality, utilising the LBVPMG field officers, as well as an adequate and long-term/on-going resourcing.
This project is supported through funding from the State Natural Resource Management Program and is facilitated through a continuing partnership with the Lower Blackwood LCDC the Lower Blackwood Vertebrate Pest Management Group.
