Australia has a cat problem—a big one. At least 15 million feral felines wander the continent, living on up to 75 million native Aussie animals every day. The cats have been called the biggest threat facing Australia’s wildlife and have already been linked to as many as 30 extinctions.

Previous attempts to trap and kill cats haven’t been very effective, but now a new solution is on the horizon. It’s called Eradicat—a combination of kangaroo mince, chicken fat, and a deadly poison called 1080, which has proven successful in other attempts to remove invasive species. Under trial conditions, it managed to kill between 70 percent and 80 percent of the cats that consumed it. The 1080 poison is a good solution for the state of Western Australia because it is made from plants that grow in the region. The native animals in these areas have evolved a resistance to those compounds through evolving with the plants. 

Buckmaster was the lead author of a paper published last year in the journal PLOS One that examined the risk 1080 might pose to native species. The study found that species that did not evolve with the plants would face a greater risk from the poison, but he said the risk would be lower in Western Australia. The exact nature of the Eradicat deployment has not yet been announced, but Buckminster said it will need to be timed at a point when cats don’t have a lot of other readily available food.

Even once the poison is deployed, other cat-control techniques such as shooting, trapping, and fencing will need to continue. Buckminster said he feels nothing will ever completely solve the problem, but 1080 is an important tool that “can be used to reduce the population to a level where native animals are less at risk”. 

Of course not everyone supports the use of 1080. The Australian charity The World League for Protection of Animals calls it “cruel”. Buckminster acknowledged that “it is simply not possible to guarantee that no non-target animal will ever take a bait and die,” but he said the risk of not using the bait is higher if cats continue their eating.

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1. The underlined phrase “feral felines” may refer to _______. （词义猜测）

A    the cats

B    the birds

C    the kangaroos

D    the chickens