Distressed Possum Variation: Timms Trap

This post is made with thanks to James Ross from Lincoln University.  

It would not be possible without the audio supplied via Jenny Dent from Zero Invasive Predators.

Throughout our trial and experimenting with lures and trapping in general it has been very clear to us that possums are aggressive and in particular are involved in attacking animals (other possums) that are already dead in traps.   Some of the most frequent activations have involved possums dead in traps with a significant number of activations, sometimes with hundreds of photographs detailing post trapping activity.  We have also seen numerous instances of fur pulled from other possums caught in traps which is clear evidence of interference post trapping.

The sounds that we have used to this point have been found from Youtube or general locations, they are not professionally recorded and are a mix of localised and Australian general videos when we've been able to strip or edit the audio tracks of freely available media and used this to target possums.

Thanks to staff from Lincoln University, they have supplied us with an audio track of a captive possum, which has come  from Jenny Dent from Zero Invasive Predators.

When the track was reviewed it was very clear that the possum was distressed.   The speed of the possum calling on the track was significantly faster than the normal.   The University of Lincoln has a outside pen for captive animals for testing, which is several kilometres in size.

The idea behind using this (this is having a distressed possum sound used as an approach) with the trap is to see what difference that this will make with the lure - will the noise of a distressed possum (as opposed to a healthy active possum) encourage more interaction with the trap?

At deployment site one at present we believe we have significantly reduced the number of possums in the riparian planting area where we are currently  trapping.   Since we started the latest phase of testing (Sunday 24th of October) in the initial period of trapping we were experiencing up to twenty seperate activations in a night and documenting up to six unique possum visits to the sound lure area.   Following this we removed a series of possums (five) as well as had the trap sprung on two other occasions where an animal was able to escape.

In the last week we are still seeing regular visits but they are singular and the possums have not been interacting with the lure or trap.   However we see clear value in using the 'distressed' version of the lure at this location to see what affect that it will have on this site.   There is still one adult male possum investigating the site and exploring around, although he appears to be trap shy.

We intend a significant deployment and recording process having replaced the confident possum sounds with the distressed possum sounds.   The images with the post are from trail cameras used in conjunction with this sound lure project in South Taranaki.