Possum fur recovery and bounties

Fur recovery industry

Attempts to reduce the threat of possums by government subsidy or market forces have not succeeded.

Possum hunter with skins

The amount of pressure applied on possum populations by the fur recovery industry, driven by the price paid for fur, usually hovers around the annual replacement rate for a healthy breeding possum population. Normal fur recovery is 'skimming' the population and benefits the hunter but does not reduce populations sufficiently to achieve a conservation benefit.

To measure population density, 100 traps are put out over one night and the population density of possums is expressed as the number of possums caught per 100 trap-nights. Research shows that to get any direct conservation or animal health benefit, the possum density figure must be reduced to 5 possums per 100 traps.

The viability of fur recovery operations requires a high possum density e.g. 50 possums for every 100 traps put out. Trapping continues until the catch rate drops down to about 30 possums per 100 traps. Below this point, under normal conditions it becomes uneconomic to continue trapping.

Some areas where DOC requires reduced possum populations are less accessible, more rugged, difficult to service and fur recovery is not a viable economic proposition. Fur trappers will go elsewhere to more accessible, higher density populations where there is a better return for their effort

In July 2009, the price paid for fur was $100 per kilogram. 18-20 possums are required to produce a kilogram of fur. If a trapper wishes to earn $200 per day, he must kill about 40 possums per day under ideal conditions. At low densities of possums, this requires very long trap lines and is a very difficult target to achieve.

The price offered for fur fluctuates. It is now more in the region of $150 per kilogram, but this is still not a sufficient incentive to increase trapping effort and trappers continue to move regularly to 'easier' possums.

Bounties

A bounty places a value on the existence of possums. However, they are expensive to administer and an expensive technique to manage possum populations. There is no incentive to reduce pests to low numbers when each animal is increasingly harder to get.

From 1951 to 1961, a bounty equating to $15 per possum failed to control possum numbers. Most skins came from "nuisance" possums in prosperous farming and semi-urban areas, or, from possums killed on country roads, rather than from areas where possums were critically affecting agricultural production, watershed protection or natural landscape and wildlife values.

If this system was reintroduced, DOC and the Animal Health Board would need to continue with their own possum control operations in priority areas.

During the era when bounties were in existence, possum populations continued to expand in Coromandel and Northland as hunters deliberately introduced the pest to those areas in order to have a local population to "farm". This applied huge pressure on populations of kiwi in Northland where possums were absent until the introduction of the bounty.

Co-operative possum management

In the East Coast region, which produces some of the best possum fur in the North Island, DOC in association with a major fur buyer promotes fur recovery in the series of 'blocks' that buffer the high value protected areas.

DOC actively encourages trappers to use its hut network and reduces administration to the barest minimum to facilitate access. The fur recovery operator reduces the possum numbers to 15 possums per 100 traps laid within the blocks.

The overall percentage profit from operations is lower but the trapper is getting closer to a conservation benefit in the trapped area. The scale of the integrated block operations in this 'buffer zone' keeps the fur enterprise profitable.

The reduced pest population helps reduce levels of pest reinvasion into DOC's core protected area where pest populations are driven close to zero.

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