Pest Free Banks Peninsula is urging the community to report any possum sightings, following its months-long ‘mop up’ operation, which has shown no detectable possum activity in the township.
“Saying there are no possums in town is a very bold statement to make,” says Wildside Operations Coordinator, Ollie Rutland-Sims. “Reinvasion is our biggest risk, because possums don’t respect boundaries and they are more than capable of traveling significant distances seeking food, shelter and mates.”
That’s why, he says, they need the community to help them defend the township. “You know the old saying, ‘it takes a village’? Well, we need this village to be our eyes and ears – if you see or hear possum activity, let us know immediately so we can deal with it.”
As well as offering a ‘Report a Pest’ (possum, goat & feral pig) form on its website, Pest Free Banks Peninsula is continuing to monitor Akaroa township during what it calls its ‘defence phase’.
“Defence is the fourth and final phase. It’s where, after progressing through the other phases, we can no longer detect any possum activity. But given the sneaky nature of these pests, we leave a layer of monitoring equipment in place so that if we do detect activity, we can jump on it straight away.”
Pest Free rangers began their first phase, ‘knock down’, in Akaroa in August last year. Over a three-month period, an intensive, tight-knight network of toxin bait stations and traps was deployed across more than 130 properties in an attempt to remove 95 percent of possums.
Next came the ‘passive mop-up’ phase, which saw a network of traps deployed around the township, this time at a much lower density. Surveillance came next, with the team using infrared trail cameras, community observations and possum dogs to root out “elusive stragglers.”
Currently, the Pest Free team is undertaking ‘knock-down’ across 1,387 hectares, with a further 6,800ha in passive mop-up, another 1,800ha is under surveillance, and properties spanning 950ha are in defence. That’s a total of 10,937ha of precious biodiverse, productive land being protected from possums.
Further proof that the Pest Free approach is working comes from local resident and entrepreneur, Grant Ryan. As part of his Cacophony Project, in 2019 Ryan installed a network of thermal cameras on his property to detect and record possum activity.
Where once his cameras captured multiple daily possum movements, now there are none.
“The pest free story only has a happy ending if we all put our collective might into being vigilant against reinvasion” says Rutland-Sims. “It’s actually easier to remove 1000 possums than it is to find the very last one – that last animal is very smart, it will avoid toxins, elude capture, and scarper down the nearest tree hollow if it sees a dog. “We have to be smarter than any remaining or reinvading possums – we have to band together so it’s all of us against every last one of them”.
