Possum numbers steady as conservation counteracts warming temperatures

There were 596 Western ringtail possums spotted in South West NRM’s annual possum count across the South West region. The group’s count sets out to gauge the number of critically endangered Western ringtail possums in both natural and urban environments. The count is community led and volunteers have clocked more than 2500 hours of searching across the previous eight years. South West Catchment Council Sustainability and Environment lead Linda Metz said the results was encouraging. “The results are really quite good,” she said. “We had on average about 2.9 possums seen each evening, which is great. “Quite a lot of them were observed in trees, like peppermint trees, which are the natural roosting and habitat of the Western ringtail possums.” Despite the growth in numbers thanks to conservation efforts such as rope bridges and replanting habitats, Ms Metz said the possum population were far from out of the woods. “I think what we will see though is in some areas, localised extinction is the real threat,” she said. “The main thing first, it can be predation, so foxes particularly when they (possums) come down, but cats which will go up into the tree. “The other challenge is roadkill … unfortunately we did have 450 deaths recorded across a number of surveys and 64 per cent of those deaths were attributed to roadkill. “We do have to make that extra effort to ensure that they can continue to persist … last year during the hot summer there was a number of injuries sustained by Western ringtail possums because of the heat.”