Canberra, Australia's capital, has a bad reputation—other Aussie cities consider it boring, uptight, and politically correct to a fault.
Most of the city's 300,000 residents don't seem to mind. The city's progressive environmental policies have created a town full of large public spaces and bushland corridors housing native wildlife.
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But new amendments to Canberra's Domestic Animals Act might add another eco-friendly policy to the books that would reduce the ability of certain four-legged residents to enjoy the great outdoors.
The new law, currently being debated by the capital's Legislative Assembly, would require all house cats in the soon-to-be-built Canberra suburbs of Forde and Bonner to stay indoors or in fenced backyards.
Cat owners moving into the new suburbs would need to have their pets implanted with microchip identification tags. If the animals are found outside the fences, owners would face up to a thousand Australian dollars in fines.
"The national capital is blessed with significant tracts of bushland interspersed with patches of urban development," said Jon Stanhope, the Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) chief minister.
"For the first time, the ACT government has decided that the sensitivity of reserves adjoining two new suburban developments is sufficiently compelling to warrant special cat-containment provisions."
Cat Collar
The proposed policy is meant to protect wildlife in the neighboring Mulligan's Flat and Goorooyarroo nature reserves.
The reserves are home to four vulnerable species of birds. They also provide habitat for an endangered lizard and several threatened frogs and reptiles.
The government decided to take action after a study showed that three quarters of the capital's cats had hunted wildlife at some point.
"We also know that cats are likely to take a higher proportion of native animals in nature reserves than in urban areas," Stanhope said.
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