Save the Brushies!

Brushtail Possums under threat from commercial interests

Your Action Needed

NEW MANAGEMENT PLAN NOW APPROVED

What is happening with possums?

A Draft Management Plan for the Commercial Harvest and Export of the Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) in Tasmania was recently submitted to the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities fOr approval. Due to an influx of submissions from the public, and groups like Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania, the plan had to be amended and was resubmitted.

The Management Plan for the Commercial Harvest and Export of Brushtail Possums in Tasmania 2010-2015 is now conditionally approved by Minister Tony Burke but live trapping, transport and killing in a slaughterhouse have been excluded. Other conditions have been imposed such as a requirement to develop a code of practice for shooting.

This is a significant improvement on the orginal proposal and represents a victory for the possums and for all the people who stood up for them. Thank you to everyone who made a submission and made a difference for these wild creatures. Bear in mind that shooting will still be allowed and there is still the potential for half a million possums to be killed each year so the fight is certainly not over yet.

While the War on Wildlife continues you are still an important part of helping to stop wildlife killing in Tasmania. Write to newspapers, meet with your local MP, like our Possums Facebook page, tell your friends (see AACT Now below). There is still much that can be done. This is about educating people to be more informed, more tolerant and more compassionate.

The notes below were part of the orginal call for submissions but serve as a reminder of what will happen and what could have been....

Carcass Exports to Asia

Tasmania is the only state of Australia to allow the commercial use of Brushtail Possums. Possum skins are exported to the mainland, carcasses are used mainly for pet food, with a smaller number for human consumption. Currently up to 10,000 possums are killed for the commercial domestic market annually.

One Tasmanian operator has also had a licence to export possum carcasses to Asia. This operator has been restricted to the Australian market since 2004 when a federal management plan that allowed international export expired and was not at a standard required by the federal government for renewal. It is largely at the agitation of this particular operator, John Kelly of Lenah Game and Gourmet Pty Ltd., that new management plan has come into being.

The Tasmanian Brushtail Possum replaces a similar sized animal favoured by the Chinese that has been pushed to the brink of extinction due to demands for it’s flesh. For the Asian market, mainly China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan whole carcasses were exported ‘skin on’. This requires that rather than being killed in the field, the possums are trapped, transferred to a tiny transport box measuring 50cm x 25cm x 25cm, before being loaded onto a truck and taken to an abattoir.

These naturally shy and solitary nocturnal creatures are forced to embark on a daytime journey that would be anyone’s worst nightmare. They can be transported for up to four hours on the open road and may be held for up to 48 hours after capture, in the tiny transport box, before being killed in the alien and terrifying environment of the abattoir.

The possums are supposed to be stunned prior to slaughter, but both observers, and footage obtained by Animal Liberation NSW, show possums having their throats cut whilst still conscious and struggling, and pouch young being swung against the work-bench to kill them. Watch the video on You Tube (warning, it is shocking). This is part of the reason live trapping was excluded from the final plan.

According to the “Code of Practice for Capture, Handling, Transport and Slaughter of Brushtail Possums”, pouch young likely to survive may be taken to a wildlife carer, or killed along with unfurred pouch young unlikely to survive. To expect wildlife carers to take on baby possums whose mothers have been purposely killed is quite bizarre.

They shoot them too!

In addition to the live capture and subsequent killing, many ossums are shot or trapped then killed in the field for the domestic meat market and skins/furs (currently up to 10,000, to be expanded to a total commercial take of up to 100,000 under the Plan).

Already, for crop protection purposes alone, around 300,000 Brushtail Possums are killed in Tasmania every year, most of them via shooting, with a smaller number via trapping and a large but unquantified number via 1080 poisoning.

No mercy is shown to the young. With the mother possum shot, under the commercial licence pouch young must be decapitated or killed by a heavy blow to the head, or by shooting, and back young (those that are old enough to ride on mum's back), must be shot.

The Brushtail Possum commercial ‘season’ now runs for a full 12 months. The extended ‘season’ is a case of the Tasmanian government bowing to pressure from commercial and farming interest groups.

Brushtail Possums are really under fire, whilst alternatives to lethal methods of control are not widely taken up by the farming community.

AACT Now

Write a letter for the Possums

Write to:

Bryan Green
Minister for Primary Industries, and Water
Email: bryan.green@parliament.tas.gov.au
Parliament House
Hobart Tas 7000

Write to:

• The Editor of your local newspaper, and

• Your local member of parliament