Attempts to Control

Many attempts have been made over time to control feral cats by lethal means such as shooting, trapping, poisons and hunting dogs. Most of these are illegal in the UK or a risk to the Scottish wildcats as well, and in all but a handful of examples on tiny, remote islands they have always failed to remove feral cats from the environment.

Lethal controls have been practiced in Scotland for centuries with no apparent effect on the feral cat population besides short term and highly localised limiting of a population on farms or shooting estates.

Animal welfare groups suggested that killing a feral cat created a surplus of resources which would then attract other cats to migrate into an area. This is called the “vacuum effect”. Killing feral cats may also lead to more kittens successfully maturing to adulthood because there was more food available.

In short, a cull could only work if ALL the cats were killed within a few months, otherwise the population bounces back: a healthy female can produce more than twenty kittens in a year which are fully independent within months.