The marsupials are protected in their native Australia, but in Aotearoa New Zealand they are widely considered to be pests. They were first released in the 19th century, so that they could be hunted for their fur. Now, they are targets of Predator Free , a state-sponsored campaign to eradicate possums, stoats and rats by the middle of this century. Despite this, some New Zealanders across the country are caring for injured and orphaned possums. Relying on each other for advice, as well as sympathetic vets who will desex the possums, they share their lives with these animals.
She believes possums are special animals. Eddie the possum shares the house with other rescue animals — Dixon currently looks after cats, chickens, pigeons and a very sick hedgehog. In order to ensure he has everything he needs, she sold her family jewellery to pay for a fully equipped enclosure.
In , possums were officially declared a pest in the New Zealand environment. By they were found in over half of New Zealand and they kept spreading. Fiordland and Northland were the last areas of mainland New Zealand to be invaded by possums. In the s there were hardly any possums in Northland, but by the s — only 30 years later — million were estimated to live there.
Possums numbers reached their highest point in the s when there were million of them in New Zealand. With such high populations, trappers began to make a good living from hunting them. Throughout the s, prices for their skins were good. In , the best year for trappers, 3. Brushtail possums can be silver-grey, brown, black, and gold. They have bushy, prehensile tails tails that can easily grasp tree branches and large, pointed ears.
Possums are marsupials, so females have a pouch. It was all quite an eye-opener for a young greenhorn from overseas, and little did I suspect then that Jim and his possums would play an important part in my life. Back in Germany, I had just finished a degree in music, and my delicate fingers were more used to the fretboard of a classical guitar than to the drying boards of a possum trapper.
The more I saw of possums, the more they fascinated me. Introduced only three years before the Treaty of Waitangi, this furry overstayer now reigns from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga, and has a population on the Chathams for good measure.
While its mocking laugh drives orchardists crazy, other people are enchanted by its cudddliness. Some drivers aim for them on the road; others pick up the wounded and take them home as pets. Both attitudes are understandable. I found it quite hard to accept that these cute animals were the focus of the biggest eradication campaign this country has ever seen. To me, the possum looked like a South Pacific version of the teddy bear. Animal lovers or not, most New Zealanders agree that drastic action is needed to get rid of the pest.
However, right from the start possums sparked controversy. In , it was withdrawn. In , it was back in place. That mentality persists to the present day. DOC gave up an all-out assault mentality some years ago. They have spread across too wide a front for us to be able to hold them.
Yet the same system that kept the East Germans in might keep the possums out, in which case it would be one of the few victories in an ongoing battle to save our forests. In the case of kohekohe, surveys estimate up to a million new seedlings per hectare. Bird numbers have also increased. Not only do possums deprive birds of berries, nectar and some insects, but they compete for nest sites in hollow trees, and have even been observed to devour young birds and eggs.
With the thickening up of the bush, Kapiti has become less suitable for fantail. The target: , possums. An 86 per cent kill rate, and, a year later, a rejuvenating forest. With a sharp metallic clang, the two steel arches of the trap snapped together.
He had just caught his thumb in a Victor leg-hold trap. This little incident happened six years after I had met Jim, and the youngster was one of eight trainees in a wildlife control scheme which I was to be tutoring for the next 20 weeks.
A bruised thumb notwithstanding, my eight possum-busters were soon ready to catch their first possums. I chose the bush edge for our first trap line. Like most animals, possums prefer to travel on paths—runs or pads, as they are known—and a well-worn run will be the site for our first trap.
We lay the trap against the base of a fence post and whack a nail through the chain to secure it. Then we put a bit of lure in the front and at the back. When I told the shop owner what they were for, he started to have serious worries about the effect this sale would have on his karma.
The result is usually the same: a strong smelling, flower based brew which leaves the person handling the stuff smelling as if he just walked out of a cheap brothel.
Once the trap and lure are in place, we build a fence, a kind of miniature palisade, on either side of the trap. We walk on until we reach a sad-looking kohekohe that has had 90 per cent of its foliage browsed back to the stems, and its trunk shredded by claw marks. We decide to put our next trap under this tree, and we make an extra-good job with it.
First we scratch the ground at the base of the tree. We then set the trap in the normal way, but about half a metre up the tree we make a series of scratches in the bark, each one about 25mm long and 5mm away from the next one.
The next morning sees us back out on the line. Some 60 per cent of the traps have caught. The size of the animals is small, but that is not unusual for Northland. Nevertheless, the sweet smell of success lies just about as heavily in the air as the smell of our lures. For many of them it had been the first time they had actually killed an animal.
Soon we are talking about the need to kill—a subject that always gets a lot of emotions going. I am glad to see such sensitive reactions from these young people, because, contrary to popular belief, I think that no hunter enjoys killing. More than 70 native tree species, together with numerous shrubs, ferns and grasses, are eaten by possums.
But the species topping the menu vary depending on the area. Among the list of unpalatable trees and shrubs are Dracophyllum, karaka, rewarewa, matai, silver beech, miro and rimu perhaps like eating a toothbrush? Pohutukawa, northern rata and southern rata are all members of the genus Metrosideros. They all put on a spectacular flowering display—lighting up the forest with showers of red and orange blossom—and they are all being hammered by possums.
Despite these and other efforts to save and regenerate, most forest ecologists are pessimistic about the future of our native bush. Although possums have been with us for years, nowhere in New Zealand have they and the forest yet reached an equilibrium. Forests continue to be downgraded as larger tree species are browsed to death, to be replaced by scrub, grasses and gorse.
If the trend continues, then forests will end up being full of species unpalatable to possums, and the New Zealand bush will be a sickly and uninviting shadow of its former self.
To be fair, the possum does not create this devastation unassisted. Most probably it is the combination of these factors over time that results in heavy forest dieback. The southern west coast and Fiordland are too wet for possums to be really comfortable, so these areas have been relatively spared. Carl Cooper, pest control officer for the Northland Regional Council, is responsible for dealing with all pest-related problems from Wellsford to North Cape.
Once you start looking, the damage to the crowns of the trees is obvious. Tonight, three of us are out to do some spotlighting. The little beam of my torch throws out just enough light to show us our way. Suddenly, a noise. Something is running up a tree.
We all stop in our tracks. Mounted underneath the barrel of the rifle, a. A big grey trunk is all we can see. And true, possums do get spotlight-shy. A big moth is attracted by the light, and casts eerie shadows on the trees. After we compose ourselves, I shine the light into the branches of the old puriri again, and there it is. I bring the rifle up to my shoulder, take aim and pull the trigger. The animal hits the ground with a thump.
We walk over to examine the carcass. In the north, with its warmer climate, abundant food supply and lower possum density, as many as 80 per cent of the females breed twice a year.
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