Objectivity Killed the Cat? Navigating Conservation Ethics in Feral Cat Management in Australia

Feral cat management in Australia highlights tensions between traditional conservation and compassionate conservation. Drawing on 19 interviews and ethnographic research with practitioners involved in feral cat management, we examine how ethical complexities are navigated in practice and explore the potential to bridge the gap between these approaches. The article demonstrates that protecting biodiversity is reinforced as the default goal through institutional norms and appeals to scientific objectivity, while ethical disagreements are shifted into technical debates. Although practitioners share concerns about limited evidence and support less harmful measures, sustainable collaboration requires explicit normative deliberation about objectives, trade-offs, and acceptable harms.