birding-aus

Possum trapping and releasing

To: Bill Stent <>
Subject: Possum trapping and releasing
From: Carl Clifford <>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 10:01:09 +1000
Bill,

Not much you can do. You could report it to the relevant authority, and they 
may decide to run with it. I don't think a Magistrate would give it much court 
time though, as they would be unlikely to regard releasing a possum into the 
bush much more harmful than releasing it in a back yard. At least the apparent 
possum was apparently released and not taken cage swimming.

Cheers,

Carl Clifford 

On 04/09/2012, at 5:52 AM, Bill Stent <> wrote:

> I had an interesting - if very short - conversation on the bike ride home 
> last night.
> 
> I was coming up the path from the Fairfield pipe bridge over the Yarra 
> (Melbourne), which passes through a bit of bush.  Ahead of me I saw a woman 
> emerge from the bush, carrying a wire crate.  I caught her just as she was 
> loading the empty possum trap into a van, with with the name of a landscape 
> design and construction company written in large letters on the side.  I 
> asked her "was that a possum you just released?"  She paused for a moment, 
> looked me up and down and said, "maybe".
> 
> Without anything else I could do, I said "good answer" and rode off.
> 
> According to the Department of Sustainability and Environment, here in 
> Victoria, "Possums may be trapped, but only to remove them from the roof. 
> They must be released on the same property within 50 metres of the capture 
> site. Licensed wildlife controllers are also authorised to trap possums, (see 
> Yellow Pages under pest control) but they will not relocate them to another 
> site."
> 
> I have a possum trap and have caught possums inside my house, and have 
> released them at my front door. Where we were, there are no houses within at 
> least 400 metres.
> 
> What can be done about this?  I know that what I saw cannot be taken as 
> evidence in anything, it's simply my word against hers.
> 
> I wrote down the name of the company as she drove off.
> 
> Bill
> 
> ===============================
> 
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to: 
> 
> http://birding-aus.org
> ===============================
===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 

http://birding-aus.org
===============================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU