Feral Cats Killed Twenty Percent of Monitored Kea in New Zealand in Two Years
The kea is the world's only alpine parrot. It is endemic to New Zealand's South Island, it can solve multi-step puzzles, use tools, and work cooperatively with other kea to achieve goals. There are somewhere between 3,000 and 7,000 left alive.
Feral cats are eating them.
The Arthur's Pass Study
Between 2019 and 2021, New Zealand's Department of Conservation tracked 45 kea fitted with radio transmitters across the Arthur's Pass to Lewis Pass corridor. The results were grim.
Feral cats and stoats killed 13 of the tracked birds. DNA analysis confirmed cats were responsible for half of those deaths. Overall, 20% of the monitored kea were killed by predators during the study period.
In 2019, only 6% of tracked kea were killed. By 2020, that number jumped to 40%. The spike coincided with a crash in mouse populations following a beech mast year — when mice disappeared, cats and stoats moved on to bigger prey.
Adult survival rates in the Arthur's Pass area dropped to 60%. In western South Island populations where predator pressure is lower, adult survival sits above 90%.
The Department of Conservation's media release laid out the data plainly.
Not Just Kea
The DOC's own feral cat threat profile documents a horror show. A single feral cat killed 107 short-tailed bats in one week near Ohakune. One cat. One week. 107 bats. A feral cat caught in Canterbury had 17 skinks in its stomach at once.
Feral cats in New Zealand kill birds, bats, lizards, insects, and invertebrates across every habitat type — from coastal dunes to alpine tussock.
New Zealand Finally Acts
In November 2025, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka officially added feral cats to the Predator Free 2050 target list. Over 90% of the 3,400 public submissions supported the move. The government is now partnering with pest control companies to develop toxic meat sausages specifically designed to attract and kill feral cats.
That's where we are. The world's smartest parrot is being hunted by an invasive predator that humans introduced, and the best solution involves poisoned sausages. Predator Free 2050 aims to eliminate rats, stoats, and possums from all of New Zealand. Cats were conspicuously absent from that list until now.
Why This Took So Long
Political cowardice. Cats have a PR advantage that rats and stoats don't. People keep cats as pets. People love cats on the internet. Nobody protests a rat cull.
But a kea is worth more than a cat. Not sentimentally — ecologically. The kea exists nowhere else on Earth. Domestic cats exist in 600 million copies worldwide. The choice between the two should not be difficult, and New Zealand has finally made it.