Australian army snipers have been waging war on the country's wild cats.
Ten snipers shot 420 feral cats in a recent three-day exercise along the Diamantina River 808 miles west of Brisbane, said Environment Minister Pat Comben.The culling was ordered because a plague of wild cats, some weighing up to 17 pounds, is threatening the bilby, a small endangered rabbit-eared bandicoot. Its numbers are down to an estimated 2,000 throughout Australia.
"There's no doubt the cats would have munched their way through the Diamantina bilbies," said Comben.
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The cats are the descendants of domestic pets that escaped into the wild.