Weddin Landcare's Melanie Cooper said they jumped on board to collaborate in this program to help protect and improve local biodiversity.
"Part of that is helping to reduce the predation of some of our [native animals] particularly our small woodlands birds. "Controlling their [cats] numbers is incredibly important. They are an incredibly hard predator to control, so tackling it at the source is really important," Mrs Cooper said.
Weddin Landcare has been working closely with the Council on the program from the beginning and have been helping to promote the program, with the response from the community has been incredible, Mrs Cooper said.
In Weddin they identified that accessibility of desexing was an issue - including getting cats to the vet, affording the de-sexing, catching the cat and transporting it to the vet. Moving forward, they will be running the de-sexing project until the end of 2024, and they will be running information campaigns about getting your cats de-sexed and preventing your cats from roaming!
This is great news for the small native animals out and about! Have you heard of similar trials - this would be a great national program, don't you think?