The federal government has essentially announced a war on feral cats, in hopes of reducing the number of native wildlife deaths per year.

On Thursday it was announced the Albanese government had opened consultation on a new action plan to prevent feral cats from killing native animals.

The plan aims to reduce the number of feral cats in the country and prevent any new native species from going extinct because of the “destructive” predators.

“When domesticated cats are living inside our homes, snuggled up at the end of our beds, we rightly love them,” Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek said.

“But feral cats are the opposite of adorable. They are walking, stalking, ruthless killers. If we don’t act now, our native animals don’t stand a chance.”

Why feral cats?

Just days ago, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released a report into invasive alien species, which concluded they pose a major global threat to nature, food security, human health and economies.

Dr Andy Sheppard, chief research scientist for biosecurity at CSIRO, co-authored one of the chapters in the report.

He said in a press release he explained that Australia has close to 3000 invasive alien species and they cost Australia about $25 billion every year in losses to agriculture and management costs.

He also said feral cats are “Australia’s most impactful invasive alien vertebrates in terms of biodiversity impacts”.

It’s estimated that feral cats kill two billion reptiles, birds and mammals every year in Australia.

Feral cats have a devastating impact on Australia’s wildlife.

In the past 200 years, feral cats have been at least partially responsible for two-thirds of mammal extinctions, including the Greater Bilby, numbat and Gilbert’s potoroo.

It’s not just the fact that feral cats stalk and kill native Australian animals, but they also compete for food and can carry deadly disease.

“I want to see a feral cat-free Australia. If we are serious about protecting our precious threatened species, then we have to tackle one of their biggest killers,” Ms Plibersek said.

“We are declaring war on feral cats. And today, we are setting up our battle plan to win that war.”

How the government will tackle the feral cat ‘war’

The draft plan has lofty ambitions including driving down cat populations and ensuring they don’t cause any new extinctions and it also aims to protect native species that are not currently threatened by cats.

The draft plan, estimated to cost at least $60 million, is focused on feral cats but also deals with the threat posed by pets.

It lays out what needs to be done over the next five to 10 years, as part of a 30-year mission to reduce the impact of cats to the point where all affected native species will have a future.

Nine core objectives include protecting species most at threat from cats, including expanding the nation’s network of cat-free fenced and island havens.

New culling and population control solutions will be pursued and there will be a focus on reducing the density of free-roaming cats around population centres.

The draft plan says pet cats “also cause predation and disease impacts on native species, and can become a source for the feral cat population” especially around human habitation and infrastructure.

The plan proposes giving local governments more power to pass by-laws that designate suburbs as cat-free and local governments could also require owners to contain their animals and limit how many cats a person has.

There could also be effects for developers who might, for example, want to put in a new road that might allow cats to move in on a susceptible species.

The plan says regulators should have to consider those effects, as well as habitat loss, when weighting up the environmental impact of projects.