Here, possums most preferred form is either as some warm furry gloves or flattened on the road. So why does New Zealand hate possums? Not only does the introduced mammal chomp through 20, tonnes of vegetation a night, but their population has increased to around 30 million currently in New Zealand! Whole canopies of trees have disappeared at the mercy of the possum. In turn, native bird species, many of which are endangered, have to compete with possums for food.
The DOC has even recorded possums eating native bird eggs on nest cameras. For instance, they have been reported to eat young kea parrots and kiwi eggs. Kiwi farmers are pretty pissed too, due to possums being a carrier of bovine tuberculosis a disease that affects cows and deer. On the other hand, there are still many advocates for the possum, with some Kiwis keeping possums as pets and others objecting to the methods used to eradicate possums in New Zealand.
This article will give you a brief context as to why. 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. In the Orongorongo Valley, east of Wellington, live the most-studied possums in the country. They control the home ranges, and hand them down from mother to daughter. New Zealand possums are a pretty unsociable lot. Apart from the occasional hissing, paw-slashing scrap when animals cross paths, each individual keeps to itself for most of the year. The exception is during the mating season, when young bucks will be competing for available females.
While possums generally go out of their way to avoid each other, they have no interest in defending a large territory for the sake of it. They do, however, advertise their presence by rubbing trees with their scent glands particularly glands under the chin and a large gland on the sternum which produces a distinctive stripe on the fur.
The tiny honey possum, by comparison, is no bigger than a mouse. Aboriginal legend connects the possum to the man in the moon. Once upon a time, so the story goes, Moonan, a warrior, and his sons went hunting for witchetty grubs. The moon shone bright in the night sky, and they soon came across a big tree where they hoped to find many grubs.
Moonan climbed to the top of the tree, and to his great joy found that he could reach the moon. As his sons rocked the tree in their excitement, he nearly fell out of the branches, and to save himself he clambered on to the moon. The sons quickly climbed the tree after him, but by the time they reached the top the moon had drifted away. Ever since, when the moon is bright, the sons climb trees to find their father. Through the ages they have grown sharp claws on their fingers, and a long tail from their spine.
What would it take to tackle the mainland? The government already rains thousands of pounds of a controversial poison onto hard-to-reach forest every year, just to keep pests at bay. To kill them all, Toki imagines "a series of rolling fronts" consisting of guns, traps, and more poison.
But don't underestimate how much New Zealand loves its wildlife. Every morning, the country tunes in to Radio NZ for a special minute of birdsong before the news. There is a "national appetite" to return the country to its original avian paradise, Daugherty said. And many believe it could be done. After all, New Zealand has been leading the world at killing things for 25 years.
When it can, though, it tries to do so humanely. After all, are possums not also of the kingdom Animalia, class Mammalia? Are not their bodies four-legged, their hearts four-chambered? If you suckle them, do they not lactate? If you prick them, do they not warmly bleed? Plenty of New Zealanders couldn't care less what a possum feels. But some do. Those animals did not survive, but people kept trying. The first possum population to survive was in Southland in In the Government made it illegal to bring any more possums into New Zealand.
It was too late; by then, they were already spread across the country. 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.
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