By CORANZ researchers
A paper published in 2008 said the possum has been wrongly demonised and has been wrongly condemned as “New Zealand’s Number One Pest.”
The author was Annie Potts Co-director, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, University of Canterbury.
“The history of brushtail possums in New Zealand is bleak<“ she said.
The colonists who transported possums from their native Australia to New Zealand in the nineteenth century valued them as economic assets, quickly establishing a profitable fur industry.
“Over the past 80 or so years, however, New Zealand has increasingly scapegoated possums for the unanticipated negative impact their presence has had on the native environment and wildlife. Now this marsupial-blamed and despised-suffers the most miserable of reputations and is extensively
targeted as the nation’s number one pest. “
In her paper Annie Potts examined anti-possum rhetoric in New Zealand, identifying the negative image as an unwanted foreign invader and a “merely a pest and therefore unworthy
of compassion.“
Annie Potts paper argued that the demonisation of possums in New Zealand is “over- determined and extreme”.
Back in 1917, the Auckland Acclimatisation Society in its annual report discussed possums saying “We shall be doing a great service to the country in stocking these large areas with this valuable and harmless animal.”
How things changed to the point in recent decades the possum has been demonised, vilified and subjected to cruel attempts by slow killing poisons to exterminate them. Primary schools have held “pest days” where youngsters were taught to inflict cruelty and heap disrespect on young possums. Some scientists hopping on the “pest” band wagon with its allocation of money have been monetarily moved to term the herbivore marsupial as a predator.
At a Department of Conservation workshop held in the mid-1990s on “Possums as Conservation Pests”, a scientist Graham Nugent of Landcare Research, spoke on the subject.
Assuming the oft-quoted figure of 70 million possums in New Zealand, the marsupials “apparently consume about 21,000 tonnes of vegetation per day – presumably 300 g wet weight consumption multiplied by 70 million possums,” he said. “This oft-quoted figure is frequently used to depict possum as a rapacious consumer of all things green.”
“But,” added Graham Nugent. “that implication ignores the trees’ daily foliage production of 300,000 tonnes for forests alone – 7.5 million hectares x 15 tonnes wet weight of foliage per hectare per year.”
Let’s explain that further.
In simpler words, the fictitious number of 70 million possums would gobble only about 1/15th or 7 percent of the new foliage each night.
Indeed, it would be less because most possums live near margins of forests adjoining paddocks rather than in the forest and a significant part of their diet is grass or spring and summer growth on farm trees like willows, growing outside the forest.
Graham Nugent termed the 70 million possum “guess-estimate” by DOC as a “back-of-a-cigarette-packet” calculation. Recently DOC have tended to reduce the “estimate” of the total possum population at 70 million down to about 35 million.
Possums do not threaten the total national forests by deforestation. For the bulk of New Zealand’s forest, the process is one of a change in individual vegetation species known as composition. There would be less palatable vegetation species. So the change is merely a structural forest change.
In this way, Nature ingeniously limits the food supply for possums and keeps the population stable.
I’m sure DoC doesn’t understand this.
The alarmist supposition that possum numbers will explode if poison drops are stopped is regarded as most unlikely by competent wild animal biologists. In any-case possums are slow breeders, i.e. mainly one “joey” a year.
Possums roam freely at my place, and no one here within a kilometer or so demonises them. When they become troublesome I simply live-trap them and relocate – with strict instructions not to return!!!
A neighbour has a pet possum that thinks it’s a cross between a cat (it ignores commands) and dog that follows faithfully everywhere!
Possums are often blamed as a spreader of bovine Tb in farmed cattle and farmed deer herds. TbFreeNZ formerly known as the Animal Health Board (AHB) is a major user of aerial 1080 poison. I know of cases where stock movement with a farmer bringing cattle from a TB area to his farm introduced Tb. The AHB (TBFreeNZ) knew this but blamed possums and instigated big 1080 drops on the public lands adjoining farmland.
In any case NZ’s bovine Tb incidence is so low as being under the yardstick, the World Health Organisation sets to be classified as TbFree.
Bureaucrats will tell porkies to keep their empires and jobs safe.
Yes, it is well known that most bovine TB is spread by stock trucks not just in NZ but elsewhere in the world too.
Yes, the incidence of TB in possums is incredibly low .. as has been tabled in our parliament (not that they took a blindly bit of notice). The autopsy of 124,000 possums in a previous decade, found just 54 had TB.
And it’s actually quite hard for cattle to catch TB from possums .. it’s contracted much more commonly from cattlebeast, to cattlebeast …
A number of years ago in a Forest and Bird magazine there were two photos of some Fuchia one with no leaves saying the possums had stripped it the next after a 1080 drop in spring with fresh leaves appearing saying the poison had done its job and killed all the possums, the twit who wrote the article didn’t know that Fuchsia was deciduous.
It is difficult to know the truth of both possum numbers and possum damage.
I was told years ago, by a university biologist that possums ate birds’ eggs, but I do not know on what evidence he based the statement.
He also had no answer to why it was that many New Zealand plants grow spines.
I suggested it was a defence mechanism, evolved over thousands of years, against browsing Moa, of which there had been many species.
I indicated, if that was the reason, perhaps deer and possums had taken the place that Moa once occupied and did no more damaged than had been done by Moa.
He was also opposed to deer.
Many years ago, I tramped round Mt Taranaki.
There was virtually no bird life to be seen.
On inquiry, I was told there had been a poison drop to kill possums.
I saw no possums either.
The single biggest ecological disaster in the history of New Zealand .. was the arrival of humans. First were Māori .. some 800 years ago.
Modern Māori like to paint themselves back then as environmentalists / conservationships .. but nothing could be further from the truth. They brought with them destructive, wild, introduced species, most notably (in this context), the rat .. and they immediately set about the destruction of the landscape, and the environment .. only restricted by their relatively small population, and limited technology.
The most notable species they made extinct was, of course, the Moa.
The second biggest ecological disaster .. was the arrival of Europeans.
This began the relatively rapid rise of the population .. a massive ramping up of the introduction of wild, introduced species .. and the technology, developed over time, to accelerate the destruction of the environment.
But all of this .. was the way of the world.
Included along the way, was the poor ole possum.
They didn’t introduce themselves .. we introduced them.
Now, like it or not, they form part of our modern biodiversity.
And that they will inevitably remain.
Like all wild, introduced species .. it is right and proper that they should not be protected (as our indigenous species are).
But like all of our wild, introduced species, to try and eradicate them is both reckless, and irresponsible (as much as it is unachievable).
Reckless and irresponsible .. because pursuit of this goal is both beyond our financial means .. and the eradication of any species from amidst our wider biodiversity causes such collateral damage.
Aerial 1080, the preferred means, is like using a shotgun .. where a rifle is needed.
A rifle the likes of which is unavailable.
A senior Landcare Research Science Team Leader estimated a cost for eradication that works out to be AT LEAST 1.6 *trillion* dollars .. that’s $1,600,000,000,000 .. for the 8 million hectares of Public Conservation Land ALONE.
1080 kills everything that consumes oxygen. It acts both directly, and via secondary poisoning .. killing target and non-target .. introduced and indigenous .. vertebrate and invertebrate .. mammalian, avian, reptilian, and insect .. and does so indiscriminately.
The only reasonable and responsible approach .. is targeted population management .. where it is practicable to do so.
Questions in Parliament in 2016 by NZ First MP Richard Prosser to Minister of Primary Industries Nathan Guy revealed possums have negligible – zero – Tb infection rates. Minister Guy said of 9830 possums autopsied last year, none had Tb.
That is zero.
Over 5 years ago now, CORANZ ran a series of home experiments to test if possums actually did like eggs – I remember it well. In several parts, the first one is here https://coranz.org.nz/do-possums-like-eggs/
Nothing done could tempt them to sample the eggs, even leaving an egg cracked open for them was ignored. coating an egg with syrup only caused one individual to carefully caress the egg and lick all the syrup off before placing the egg carefully back down.
I know many accept the staged photo of a possum devouring a blackbird chick in the same frame as a rat (as though they would ever be present together) somehow as gospel but I have severe doubts – and why do possums not attack birds eggs in their native Australia? For me the jury is well and truly out.
Three or four Landcare Research studies showed no bird remains and no egg remains in possum stomachs autopsied. Yet DoC and extreme radical groups like Forest and Bird claim possums are predators.
The late Les Pracy known as Mr Possum for his research at the Orongorongo research station near Wellington, said claims of possums raiding birds nestand eating eggs were false.
And as for possums being predators, on any significant scale .. people need to out this for what it is.
Pure, unadulterated bullshit.
An unbelievably tall tale .. that somehow, stupid people are sucked in be.
A sheer fabrication, specifically designed to further demonise the poor ole possum.
And nothing more than propaganda, intended to justify an unjustified campaign, and a reckless and irresponsible misallocation of taxpayer and ratepayer money.
All backed up by .. no scientific evidence, whatsoever.
(Apart from a few demonstrably doctored photos, and the odd misused video demonstrating nothing more that the fact that possums and some native birds share a preference for similar sleeping spots.)