Playing possum
Industry supports predator-free plan
For an industry that has been delivered a death sentence by the Government, the possum fur and meat business is showing vigorous signs of life.
The New Zealand Fur Council says possum fur alone is worth $130 million a year and employs about 1500 people. But if National’s recently announcedgoal of ridding the country of possums by 2050 is achieved, the industry will go bust.
Some top trappers are earning six figure sums a year for their work, says one Northland fur agent.
Figures for the value of possum meat are hard to come by, but Dawson Furs in Whakatane is one of the leading agents, and pays out about $800,000 a year to trappers for the meat which is turned into pet food.
Dawson Furs produces its own brand of raw and pelletised pet food, while Superior Chunky in Cambridge makes a dog roll from possum meat called Possyum. Neither would reveal sales turnover.
Without exception, leaders in the industry back the predator-free goal, some more enthusiastically than others. With such a distant timeframe, perhaps they can afford to.
As Steve Boot of Basically Bush puts it, ‘‘we would have fallen off our perch long before then’’.
Peri Drysdale of Untouched World, who creates sought–after fashion made from a mix of merino wool and possum fur, says she is right behind the campaign. She concedes that if she could not source possum fibre ‘‘tomorrow’’ it would be a problem.
However red deer, elk, wallaby, rabbit, marmot, tahr and squirrel are just some of the alternatives that could be used in a postpossum world.
Rather than be a hindrance to the campaign, the industry is saying it wants to help it by catching even more than the 1.5 million a year (for both fur and meat) it traps now.
‘‘Predator-free New Zealand is a commendable and aspirational goal and we want to be part of the solution to achieve it,’’ said Fur Council chief executive Neil Mackie.
‘‘There are an estimated 35 million possums out there. Currently we are trapping and recovering fur from 20,000 possums a week. To meet the growing demand from our industry, we want to trap and recover up to 40,000 a week. That is 15 per cent of the total population of possums removed annually – and comes at no cost to the taxpayers.’’
In fact, at least $100m a year is being spent to control possums, some by the Department of Conservation (DOC), regional councils and Ospri (Operational Solutions for Primary Industries). Farmers also chip in to top up funding for Ospri, which keeps TB in cattle in check. They are infected through possums.
DOC points out that its 1080 poison operations not only kill possums, but also rats, stoats and mice.
DOC and Ospri are keen to enlist trappers to the cause of killing possums. Last year DOC signed a memorandum of understanding with the Fur Council to make it easier for trappers to access DOCcontrolled areas.
It is also conscious of the fine line between encouraging an industry, and not allowing it to become self-perpetuating. And while trapping puts a dent in the possum population, it is a minor one.
Boot, who harvests about 1.2 million possums a year, said the predator-free goal was ‘‘aspirational, blue-skies thinking’’ which came as a surprise because no-one in the industry had been consulted.
‘‘Possums should be funding their own demise,’’ he said, and believes trappers could play an important role.
Dawson describes the predatorfree goal as ‘‘very noble but impossible’’ unless a novel genetic control is discovered. He directly employs five people, but uses 17 agents who buy from 200 trappers around the country.
He would like to see the Government divert some of its funding on pest control to the industry.
‘‘They pay absolutely nothing to the meat and fur industry, yet spend about $100m and most of those animals are left to rot. They could spend maybe $20m, put it in trappers’ pockets and get them out there doing it,’’ Dawson says.
The value of the fur at $120 per kilogram was not enough to sustain the average trapper, although it was sufficient for the top 20 per cent.
‘‘The other smaller guys who are unemployed or working for someone else, they are the ones you want to make it worthwhile for with a bounty,’’ said Dawson.
Poisoning made it difficult for trapping. No trapping can be carried out for three years in areas where brodifacoum has been used.
‘‘The policy should be if you kill something, you kill it in a way to make a product out of it,’’ Dawson said.
Northland trapper and fur agent Scott Candy agrees. He buys about 8000 possums a month and says there is a wide variation in what people manage to catch.
‘‘You reap what you sow, the harder you work the more you make. But if you put a $5 bounty on a possum there would be a hell of a lot of possums getting killed,’’ he said.
DOC spokesman Herb Christophers said one of the problems with was that people will do what they did in Northland in the 1960s when a bounty was offered.
‘‘Someone realised they could make a government-backed income by releasing possums into [previously possum-free] Northland forests,’’ he said.
DOC and other government agencies want to kill possums for ecological reasons. Trappers can help towards that goal but not with the same efficiency as 1080.
Christophers said a trapper might put out 100 traps a night. If he caught 40 possums he was making a good income, at 20 it was marginal, but below that it became uneconomical.
Ospri group manager Dr Stu Hutchings said that eradicating TB in possums meant reducing the numbers to an incredibly low level.
‘‘We need to get them down to one to two possums per 10 hectares. That’s not economically sustainable for fur or meat trappers. Our Ospri-contracted trappers put out 100 traps a night and are catching only two possums,’’ he said.
The trappers employed by Ospri needed to be pre-approved and meet health and safety regulations, so it was not the sort of job anyone could do.
‘Predator-free New Zealand is a commendable and aspirational goal and we want to be part of the solution to achieve it.’ Fur Council chief executive Neil Mackie