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Buy products to control possums by clicking the circular icons at the top of this page. POSSUMS DAMAGE NATIVE TREES AND WILDLIFE and are carriers of bovine tuberculosis. Their nightly noise keeps people awake and they have been known to enter suburban dwellings where they do a great deal of damage, especially if they are disturbed. POSSUMS EAT THE JUICY NEW LEAFY GROWTH of our native trees – their favourites being pohutukawa, rata, totara, kowhai and kohekohe, whose trunks they climb using their sharp claws. They also eat insects, berries, birds’ eggs (and sometimes the chicks) and have been known to eat our precious land snails. They cause problems in city gardens too, eating apples, plums, citrus fruit and roses. POSSUMS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO PUSH KIWI OUT of their burrows in order to secure a dry place to sleep! Nocturnal animals, possums are active during the night. They have a keen sense of smell and their big ears ensure excellent hearing. They don’t like cold, damp places and live in weatherproof nests in sheds, barns, sheltered trees, hollow logs and holes in banks. THE COMMON BRUSHTAIL POSSUM was introduced to New Zealand by European settlers in an attempt to establish a fur industry. The possums soon escaped into the wild where they have thrived as an invasive species. There are no native predators of the possum in New Zealand. Today it is estimated they number around 70 million. THE POSSUM IS A MARSUPIAL, carrying its young in a pouch. Young possums spend their first four months in the pouch, but by six months old are living entirely independent of their mothers. |