Possums Okay in a Toyota Ad But Not in a Wetland

During project site visits, RiverCare’s operations manager noticed increasing possum damage to several established native trees on two projects that are in the pre-planting stage of development. He’s seen this before when restoration activity changes habitat and limits feeding options—possums quickly move to feeding on new vegetation types. If their numbers are high, it doesn’t take long before grazing damage and broken branches can be seen within the canopy of their new favourite tree.

To control pest animals on projects, RiverCare has used Timms Traps and the Doc 200 or 250. All three are kill traps which require resetting once triggered by a predator.

NZ Auto Traps have designed, tested and are now selling the AT220 Possum and Rat Trap. This trap is self-resetting, which means once the predator has been killed, the trap automatically resets. This means one trap can have multiple kills in a night and eliminates the need for a person to go back to rebait and reset traps—this generates a massive saving on valuable labour hours.

RiverCare recently purchased two auto traps and set them up on a project. After just one night out one trap caught and killed 5 possums. It was checked again last Saturday and was found to have another 9 dead possums under it.

This may seem cruel but possums are not only grazing on our plants, they are eating the bugs and inspects that feed our native birds and wildlife. They can also raid birds’ nest and eat their eggs and are carriers of tuberculosis (TB). The traps instantly kill and meet all animal welfare guidelines.

These traps help us keep our wetlands predator free, which provides a safe environment for our native plants, birds, fish, bugs and insects to live.