Animalia
The longest cat fence in the U.S. was just built on a Hawaiian volcano
By
Karin Brulliard November 30, 2016
A wildlife rehab center confirms that cats are killers]
spent nearly four years flying in people and materials to build the cat-proof barrier, a 6-foot-tall fence topped with a curved section that even the wiliest kitty is not supposed to be able to scale. It’s the longest anti-cat fence in the United States, and it encloses 600 acres of 8,000- to 10,000-foot-high terrain that petrels, also known as ‘u’au, now view as choice breeding territory.
[New Zealand vows to kill every weasel, rat and feral cat on its soil]
Hawaiian petrels are seafaring birds that arrive at Mauna Loa to build nests in deep lava crevices in April. In June, females lay just one egg. The egg hatches in August, and the chick does not fly away until November.
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have been caught on video doing.
The barrier is the latest example of a “conservation fence,” which is meant to protect wildlife from attackers (while also not angering cat-defenders too much). Hawaii is home to a handful, but the leaders in this method are Australia and New Zealand, where cats and other invasive predators have helped wipe out so many species that the governments have
declared all-out war on them. One
such fence in Australia, for example, is 26 miles long.
A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that there are about 75 breeding pairs of petrels on the Big Island. It has been corrected to reflect that that is the number of pairs in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
