Most people book us to stop losing lambs, poultry or vines. But on the Mornington Peninsula the same work does something bigger: it takes pressure off native wildlife that is quietly disappearing. Foxes and feral cats, both introduced, are the two biggest direct killers of native animals in Australia, and the Peninsula's mix of bushland reserves sitting right next to farms and lifestyle blocks makes it one of the places where control on private land matters most.
The animals paying the price are the ones you rarely see. The Southern Brown Bandicoot, listed as endangered in Victoria, hangs on in pockets of dense cover around Greens Bush, Devilbend and the Mornington Peninsula National Park, and a single fox working a patch at night can wipe out a local group. Along the back beaches, Hooded Plovers nest straight onto the open sand, and their eggs and chicks are easy meals for foxes and cats patrolling the dunes at dawn. Ringtail possums, antechinus, small ground birds, skinks and frogs all sit on the same menu.
A feral cat is a particularly efficient hunter. Studies across Australia put the national toll from cats in the billions of native animals a year, and unlike a fox a cat will kill well beyond what it needs to eat. On bush-edge blocks we often find one or two cats working a whole neighbourhood's worth of reserve frontage.
This is where shooting does something baiting can't. It is target-specific: we identify every animal through a thermal scope before a shot is taken, so we remove the actual fox or cat doing the damage without putting poison into an environment full of native predators like owls and goannas, or risking pets and working dogs. Nothing is left in the paddock or the bush afterwards.
The real gains come when private landholders and the reserves work together. Parks Victoria and Landcare run baiting and monitoring inside the big reserves, but foxes and cats don't respect boundaries, and reserves are constantly re-invaded from the farms and lifestyle blocks around them. When the properties bordering a reserve knock predator numbers down at the same time, they create a buffer, and that's when ground-nesting birds and small mammals inside actually get a chance to breed and hold on. The published research on fox control is consistent on this point: drop fox density around a patch of habitat and native populations climb.
So if your block backs onto bush, a creek line or the coast, a night of fox and cat control is worth more than the lambs or chooks it saves. It's one of the few things a single landholder can do that measurably helps the hooded plovers, bandicoots and bush birds that make the Peninsula what it is. If that's part of why you want the work done, tell us when we assess the property and we'll plan the sessions around the habitat as well as the stock.