1 day Ago By Jenny Hanwell
Photo, Jenny HanwellMost people only see these nocturnal troublemakers when they end up squashed on the road, not thinking anything of it and definitely not seeing the damage they cause to our forests. But possums are a problem in New Zealand simply because they are in the wrong place, and it’s too late to send them back to Australia. In 1887, New Zealand settlers decided to release possums into the bush to add something “useful” to this “empty” landscape.
Thinking they were herbivores, “Acclimatisation Societies” of the time didn’t know how much damage possums could do. In fact, possums were even protected by law from 1889 to 1947. Eventually, it became apparent that the trees and shrubs of New Zealand didn’t have the defences to cope with an onslaught of possums as they thrived and became widespread, with more being released into new areas.
One of the issues with possums is that they have favourite trees that they strip of leaves, fruits and flowers, preventing natural forest regeneration and thinning the canopy. However, possums proved to be even more of a problem for our ecosystems when it was discovered that they were not herbivores but opportunistic omnivores, sniffing out birds’ eggs and chicks, native insects and even lizards to eat. In the 1980s, when the population was at its peak, there were an estimated 70 million possums in New Zealand, consuming something like 21,000 tonnes of vegetation a night.
That’s the equivalent of a large container ship full of leaves, fruit and flowers, as well as those more worrying snacks. Forests damaged by possums are more vulnerable to extreme weather events, with more rainfall reaching the soil and a sparse understorey due to seeds being eaten by possums and rats. Orchardists and home gardeners have also noticed significant damage.
As with many of the harmful creatures brought here by humans, it’s up to us to set things right and restore the balance of nature before it’s too late. Doing nothing isn’t an option. If we keep the possums, we’ll lose much of our native biodiversity, which is found nowhere else in the world.
This isn’t just a problem somewhere out in the bush but right here on the Hibiscus Coast. For more than 10 years, Forest & Bird’s Pest Free Hibiscus Coast Project has worked to remove possums from Whangaparāoa Peninsula and surrounding areas, protecting our bush reserves and preventing possums from finding their way into Shakespear Regional Park. Over the past five years, thanks to the efforts of local volunteers servicing the traps, more than 800 possums have been humanely removed.
Our monitoring shows numbers on the peninsula are low. However, as soon as we install new traps on the edge of the project area in Silverdale, dozens of possums are caught. One tree with a hole in it had a possum appear each night as soon as the previous one got caught in the trap and became known as “the possum dispenser” How you can help We are launching a new campaign based on an approach we have been testing called “detect and respond.
” We need the community to look out for signs of possums in parks and on private land –think scratches on trees, possum droppings and heavily chewed leaves. You might even hear their strange calls at night. Let us know when and where you see them as soon as you can, and we’ll send out one of our possum experts to trap it humanely.
Email [email protected].
