Cats eradicated from Little Dog Island

Kalinka, one of the detection dogs used during the monitoring program. (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)

Little Dog Island, which forms part of Bass Strait's Furneaux Group, has been declared free of feral cats after a successful eradication program.

The remote island is a traditional 'safe haven' for birdlife.

Penguins have been spotted on the island for the first time in decades.

Penguins have been sighted on a remote Bass Strait island for the first time in decades after the successful eradication of feral cats and possums.

Little Dog Island forms part of the Furneaux Group, a collection of islands north-east of Tasmania, and every year plays host to an estimated half a million nesting shearwaters.

But birdlife on the "spectacular" 83-hectare island has long been "taking a hammering" from feral cats.

Dr Sue Robinson, an invasive species biologist with Biosecurity Tasmania, said the pests would likely have been introduced to the island when it was previously used for grazing livestock.

The 83-hectare island is in Bass Strait, off Tasmania's north-east coast. (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)

"Mice would have probably come when Europeans came… or when livestock were brought to the island," she said.

"And as soon as you've got mice, if people are living there, they usually bring cats with them.

During the winters of 2022 and 2023, Dr Robinson and her team set out to trap and remove feral cats from Little Dog Island.

She said 21 cats were caught and humanely euthanised during that period.

"Now on 83 hectares, that's a lot of cats," Dr Robinson said.

Various monitoring activities — including thermal imaging, scent detection dogs and motion sensing cameras — have since recorded no sign of feral cats on the island.

Little Dog Island is in the Furneaux Group. (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)

Further, for the first time since the 1980s, penguins have been sighted.

"Cats would have been killing penguins — and now they're coming back," Dr Robinson said.

More than one hundred possums were also removed by Dr Robinson's team, and she was confident they had now been eradicated from the island.

The eradication program was funded by the Commonwealth and delivered by Tasmania's Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Dr Robinson said the success at Little Dog Island boded well for other feral cat eradication efforts across the country.

Little Dog Island is a known breeding ground for shearwaters. (NRE Tasmania: Dr Sue Robinson)

In 2018, the Western Australian government declared Dirk Hartog Island free from feral cats — 400 years after the Dut