Thread: TB in possums - not many if any

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Kill 40% of a slow breeding native each drop and the predators are back in a year that's not difficult maths.

Hmmm speaking of made up figures...

But in all seriousness, im not a huge fan of 1080 myself, but there is no realistic alternative. Trapping easy country costs 2 or 3 times as much money, and isn't safe or even realistic at all in hard country. If you think 1080 is a conspiracy and is simply a case of "big business" then attempting to do it via trapping would have to be even "bigger business" and you're setting people up to fail (possum control is performance based - no pass equals no pay!).

Traping only gets one pest, e.g if you want to get rats, mice, possums, stoats....then you need four different trapping regimes to target each pest individually, and trapping rats and mice on a large scale simply isn't possible because rats and mice have such small home ranges you'd needs an impossible numbers of traps. The true cost would be the sum of all those meathods added together (rats, mice, possums, stoats...) $$$$.

1080 will do all of the above for a fraction of the cost. And its actually achievable, unlike trapping all those pests (rats, mice, possums ad stoats) which is fantasy.

Id love to see other methods used in the future, but if we're been realitic there's nothing even close to replacing it right now.

Kj