The ‘frantic’ paw prints on a beautiful Coffs Harbour beach that lead to a grim discovery

A devastated wildlife rescuer has shared horrific details of a series of gruesome discoveries at a popular tourist beach.

Tina Birtles believes pet dogs are responsible for several recent sickening attacks on wallabies mauled to death on a beach at Nambucca Heads south of Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast.

Disturbing photos of the beach after the most recent attack on June 15 show frenzied paw prints and drag marks in the sand, leading to the corpse of a baby wallaby almost split in half with its internal organs torn out.

‘There were fresh blood globules stuck to the sand, but also frantic dog prints all around,’ Ms Birtles told Yahoo News Australia.

‘The only thing holding him together was the fur on his belly — it was horrific.’

Rescuers also found an adult wallaby which had been mauled to death on the same beach weeks earlier.

Dogs are banned are at the beach where the wallaby corpses were discovered which is popular with tourists and described by locals as ‘a beautiful part of the world’.

It comes weeks after Ms Birtles came across a platypus corpse at a popular swimming spot along the nearby Never Never River, also believed to be a victim of a suspected dog attack.

Dogs aren’t the only thing destroying native wildlife in the Coffs Coast region with roaming cats also wrecking havoc by preying on gliders, possums and antechinus.

The carnage has left Ms Birtles and other wildlife rescuers at their wit’s end. 

‘It’s almost criminal that this killing continues to go on,’ she said.

Frenzied paw prints (pictured) led to the horrific 

A wallaby corpse was found lying on the sand at a Nambucca Heads beach earlier this month

Feral cats threaten the survival of over 100 native species in Australia and also can carry infectious diseases which are often transmitted to native animals, domestic livestock and humans. 

An estimated 323 million native animals are killed by cats in Australia each year, according to a new report released by the Invasive Species Council (ISC) report.

The figures has increased by a third, up from 241 million in 2020, according to the analysis from the Biodiversity Council, Invasive Species Council and Birdlife Australia.

This is despite almost 50 per cent of Victorian councils enforcing cat curfews with a number of similar bans in Western Australia. 

Cats born after July 1, 2022 are prohibited from roaming in public in the the ACT.

The ISC is calling for stricter laws in NSW, where cats can freely roam the streets unsupervised.

‘The NSW Government could save 66 million native animals every year in the Greater Sydney area alone by legislating 24/7 cat curfews and boosting funding for responsible pet ownership initiatives like subsidised desexing and a state-wide education campaign,’ ISC conservation officer Candice Bartlett said.

Tina Birtles also believes dogs were responsible for a platypus which was found mauled to at the nearby Never Never River (pictured)