Gryphon, there is one thing that every environmentalist must have… and that is the sustainability ethic,

Yes and for sustainability of our fragile environment fauna wise the cat must GO.

Gryphon, you seem to be fixated with cats. There is far more to sustainability that trying to deal with one very narrow issue.

As a person "out there" i see the damage done by the evil ones,not fixated but very concerned as i see the piles of feathers as left by cats on almost a daily basis in and around the property where i live (Vic bush)i leave no stone unturned in dealing with them.
I also practice sound environmental farming ideals also and one of those is to rid the property of vermin and for the "sustainability" mentioned above it for me does include native fauna wise getting rid of feral cats otherwise there will be no sustaining of the native animal population...fixated? No!

And if we are by some amazing stroke of good luck or brilliant planning able to eradicate feral cats, we will still have foxes, cane toads, carp, feral honeybees and hordes of other feral critters, rubbervine, prickly Acacia, broombush, buffel, gamba, Guinea and para grasses and hundreds of other weeds, overgrazing, overclearing, fragmentation of habitat, silted up and salinated waterholes, changed fire regimes and so on….all of which add up to a much much greater impact on out native wildlife than that wrought by cats.

I was the president of the North Queensland Conservation Council 14 years ago. One of the main things that caused me to distance myself from that organisation was the extraordinarily narrow focus of just about all the active members in the organization. Everyone had their own barrow to push, and no one was really interested in the big picture, or at least not interested enough to put a significant part of their time and energy towards it. The campaigns that took just about all the energy of the organisation were single development issues such as Port Hinchinbrook and Magnetic Quays on Magnetic Island. Meanwhile, rapid coastal development and land clearing well inland continued just about unchallenged.

The point is; we need to look at these problems in a holistic manner.

i was the president of the North Queensland Conservation Council 14 years ago.

So what is it you do now for our environment...curious after reading your line above.

Gryphon, I am a principle scientist in the field of botany and ecology and a long-time government employee. But I can’t give you specifics, because of absurd restrictions on freedom of speech that exist in our so-called free democracy. I would love to write posts on this forum under my own name, but I have to use a pseudonym.

Over the years I have been active in non-government organisations, including many years on the committees and stints as president of two others as well as NQCC.

I have given many presentations to these organizations and the occasional conference presentation and guest lecture at James Cook Uni, and hundreds of letters to the editors of various newspapers and a few articles over a period of 15 years, before the advent of internet forums.

So what do I do for the environment? Not as much as I used to. These days it is just posts on OLO, over a thousand now, most of which have an environmental bent, and keeping the message coming regarding population growth, coastal development and land clearing within my job and wherever I can