Overview
- The federal government, South Australia and philanthropists announced a combined near-$4 million funding package on July 24, 2026 to resume the Dudley Peninsula eradication and aim for island-wide elimination by 2030.
- Since 2020 the Kangaroo Island Landscape Board has removed about 1,900 feral cats and estimates roughly 150 remain inside a 3 km cat-proof fence that isolates the Dudley Peninsula.
- Monitoring and field work indicate the program could cut the remaining population by more than 95 percent this winter, after which teams will carry out mop-up operations and 24 months of surveillance to verify absence of cats.
- The campaign uses AI-connected cameras, remotely monitored traps, detection dogs, thermal drones and the cat-proof fence to detect and remove the last, hardest-to-find animals.
- Leaders say a successful Dudley eradication would be the largest feral-cat removal on an inhabited island and could become a blueprint for a proposed $200 million national islands fund driven in part by H5N1 biosecurity concerns.