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Proceedings of the First Symposium on Marsupials in New Zealand

Samples

page 66

Samples

The following samples of possums have been included in this survey:

1.Hokitika River catchment, October-December 1970. After Boersma (1974).
2.Kapiti Island, June 1968. 56 animals were gin-trapped by commercial hunters in the bushed central part of the island along the Trig and McKenzie tracks, leading from Rangatira flats to the summit. These animals had been subject to moderate annual trapping for many years.
3.
(a)Waitotara (6 km N.E. of Waverley, Wanganui) July-October 1970. Control operations had been withheld on this farm of 242 ha for at least two years previously as the Patea-Waitotara Pest Destruction Board was conducting a mark-recapture trial there. But in 1970 the Board attempted to exterminate possums with prolonged and intensive poisoning, trapping and shooting. Most of the animals were killed in the first month (July) of this operation. The flat pastureland was intersected with scrub and bush-choked gulleys and, although 406 possums were taken from the farm, some survived in the more inaccessible cover.
(b)Waitotara, 7-25 February 1974. The same farm was poisoned and trapped again and 88 possums collected.
4.Hohonu State Forest, Westland. Between January 1973 and February 1974, Dr B.R. Cook, livestock officer of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and Dr J. Coleman of the N.Z. Forest Service collected 2269 possums at two-monthly intervals. 1203 of these were aged by sectioning teeth. The animals were trapped and poisoned from pastureland at the edge of the bush to a distance of 3.6 km into the forest (Cook 1975).
5.Tokoroa, September 1974. Clout (1977) poisoned 111 possums in a 3-year-old pine plantation and aged the animals by sectioning teeth.
6.Tokoroa, December 1974. Clout poisoned 133 possums in a mature Pinus radiata forest, 10 km away from the young plantation.
7.Orongorongo Valley, southern Rimutaka Range, 16 km east of Wellington, 1970-1973. 103 possums found dead on the ground or dying in cage traps were collected from broadleaf-podocarp forest near the mouths of Greens Stream and Woottons Stream (see Crawley (1970)). These animals were found during a capture-recapture study running since 1966 (Bell, this symposium) and are presumed to have died of natural causes.
8.Tennyson Inlet, Marlborough Sounds, 1971-75. 68 possums were trapped over five years by Drs R. Bray and G. Struik in bush-covered hills.page 67
9.Wainuiomata Valley, 26 February-5 March 1976. Officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries poisoned 280 possums with cyanide along the bush edge bordering the southern Wainuiomata Valley, along the "5-mile track", and up the Peak and Dick Streams, Orongorongo Valley. These populations had been occasionally poisoned and trapped for many years.
10.Ashley Forest, North Canterbury, May 1975-May 1976. Warburton (1977) gin-trapped 472 possums in Pinus radiata forest at fortnightly intervals.
11.Copland Valley, South Westland, January-February 1978. Fraser (1979) sectioned teeth of 185 animals poisoned with cyanide.
12.Between 1966 and 1977, 670 adult or subadult possums were trapped, marked and released in 14 ha of bush adjacent to the DSIR field station in the Orongorongo Valley and most of these were recaptured at monthly intervals for several years (see Bell, this symposium). Detailed dossiers on many animals were built up. A sample of 100 males and 100 females, having been repeatedly recaptured over a three-year period, some time between 1966 and 1973, and therefore considered to be permanent residents in the study area, disappeared from the records or were found dead before 1973. Six years elapsed without further trace of these 200 animals so they are presumed to have died. The date on which they were found dead or the date of their last capture is noted in Table 6.