In Australia's most remote community, Kiwirrkurra,
there's an unusual sign in the window of the town's only shop — an offer
of $100 to catch and kill a feral cat.
The desert community in
the heart of Western Australia has experienced a spike in the number of
the pests in recent years, according to Kate Crossing from the
Kiwirrkurra Indigenous Protection Agency."Over the last four years that we've been recording numbers, we're up to 100 cats," she said.
"That's animals that people have either caught in their own time or caught on ranger trips."
Traditional hunters have declared war on feral cats to save one of Australia's most iconic threatened species, and they've come up with a unique way of solving the problem.
They eat them.
"Pussy cat been here a long time," community elder Jimmy Brown said.
"All the ladies go out in the bush … to find the bush meat, and teaching the kids properly to hunt."Surprisingly, Indigenous custodians and wildlife experts estimate cats have been living in Australia's Western Desert region even before the first European explorers arrived in the area in the 19th century.
"There's nowhere in the desert you can go without finding a cat track," wildlife ecologist Dr Rachel Paltridge said.
"Cats in the desert are completely independent of people. They're tough, cunning, ferocious animals that are killing native wildlife everyday."
In the Western Desert, hunting is a prized skill, passed down from generation to generation.
"Kiwirrkurra is special. It's got a number of people who are still really skilled at hunting cat, it's a skill they've had ever since cats moved into the landscape, and they've been hunting them for food ever since," Ms Crossing said.
For Mr Brown, the rewards of the hunt are tasty.
"I've tried pussy cat, it's a good meat, there's plenty of bush tucker round here," the community elder said.
Leading the fight against feral cats is Yalti Napangati.
Ms Napangati is one of the Pintupi Nine, the last group of Aboriginal people to make contact with Europeans. Before contact she survived entirely off the land.
"We used to eat bush meat, we used to eat bush honey and kangaroo as well," Ms Napangati said.
In 1984, Ms Napangati and her siblings walked into Kiwirrkurra having never seen or spoken to a non-Indigenous person.
Today, she is considered one of the best hunters in the country.
Unsurprisingly, cats are hard to catch. There are not many animals that can survive in the harsh desert climate of Australia's most remote sand country.
Yet amongst the spinifex, cats are thriving.
"Cats have adapted to Australia's deserts, they can survive without water," Dr Paltridge said.The native bilby is one animal under attack from feral cats. It once existed all over Australia but is now considered critically endangered. Today, Kiwirrkurra is one of the last homes of the bilby, or as locals call it, "Ninu".
To learn more about their behaviour and how to protect them, traditional owners in partnership with wildlife ecologists organised a "bilby camp" to teach local school children about bilbies and how to protect them.
"It's important to pass knowledge from the old people to the young people," Ms Napangati said.
Around Australia the bilby is considered endangered, but Ms Crossing said the ranger program is helping to stabilise numbers in the Western Desert.
"Aboriginal people are worrying about the next generation not having as much knowledge about animals on their country, how to look after country, how to recognise tracks and signs," Ms Crossing said.
Calls for ranger programs and fences
Huge efforts are being made to protect bilbies around Australia. Earlier this year, Landline visited Newhaven in the Northern Territory, where a vast cat-proof enclosure is being built.
But Dr Rachel Paltridge says fences aren't the only way to protect bilbies.
"While breeding bilbies behind fences might seem the safest thing to do, I think we need to be putting as many resources as we can into protecting wild bilby populations across the desert," Ms Paltridge said.
Ms Paltridge credits the Kiwirrkurra ranger program for helping to save bilbies from extinction.
"Supporting Aboriginal rangers to do fire management and cat hunting is probably the best thing we can do for bilby populations across the desert," she said."We're keeping bilbies in the wild, so they still have wild behaviours, and they're resilient to predators."
The ranger program also provides important employment opportunities.
"In remote areas where there's not a lot of work, Aboriginal people can do work that they're really good at," Ms Paltridge said.
That's something that has traditional owner Mr Brown pleased.
"The best hunters are here, in Kiwirrkurra. When it comes to the bush, we are a really strong people," Mr Brown said.
Learn more about this story on Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday.
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