Jerry has urban ecologist Darryl Jones over to his garden, who shows how him how gardeners can learn to live with Australia’s most controversial native animal; the backyard possum.

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Chances are if you’re a gardener in Australia (or even NZ), you’ve had a run in with possums. You may even have a few hairraising possum stories to share. These fearless raiders know how to make their presence felt, and there’s nothing they like more than pilfering your vegetable patch at their surly leisure, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

The culprit is the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). Their range includes all capital cities of Australia, and urban populations are booming. “They’re pretty much everywhere we are” says Darryl.

HOW IT’S DONE
First, some ground rules. Brushtail possums are a native animal, and were here before we arrived. As such, they are a part of our natural environment and are protected under federal environmental legislation. Harming or interfering with a possum in any way is illegal, and this includes trapping and transporting.
Conversely, possums are not a danger to humans. Like any wild animal if they are cornered and stressed they will try to defend themselves to escape. However, as small herbivores they are low on the food chain and so their primal instinct is to avoid danger.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK
Darryl says it’s important to start by pointing out “what doesn’t work”. “There’s been so many things attempted. Taste sprays, strange devices that emit sounds and frequencies. Absolutely none of them work. And those plastic owls don't work either.

Some gardeners recommend installing a nesting box; the idea being that one territorial possum will set up shop, and expel all other possums frequenting the area. Darryl says the reality is often the opposite; “More places for them to sleep during the day actually increases densities and territorial behaviour rather than reducing it”.

Feeding them is not a good idea as it will just cause them to be familiarised with humans and their numbers to grow artificially.

PRUNING TO REMOVE ACCESS
Darryl says the first thing to do if possums are attacking your fruit trees is to prune to remove access. “They will avoid at all costs going to ground; it makes them more vulnerable to predators”. “Overhead cables and fence lines mean it’s possible to never go onto the ground for them in our cities”. If you can physically exclude them from your tree by removing overhanging branches from other trees or pruning it away from the fence line, the possums won’t be brave enough to go to ground.

NETTING & BAGGING
Darryl says the easiest way to save your fruit is “physical exclusion”. For smaller trees, this can be as simple as slipping mesh fruit ripening bags over the fruit. You can use old stockings for a recycled option.
If your tree is a bit bigger, or if you want to exclude an entire garden bed, hail protection netting will also work.
It’s important to use to use netting with a fine gaugeanything too wide will run the risk of not only entangling wildlife, but the hungry possums being able to stick their snouts through to browse.

RING OF WIRE
What about tender seedlings? Possums will often hang off fences to browse on young growth. To protect individual plants until they reach maturity, Darryl recommends a simple ring of chicken wire tied in a circle and placed over the top of plants to act as a cloche.

CELEBRATE THEIR SURVIVAL
While a familiar sight in our urban backyards, possums are up against it in wider Australia. “From a conservation perspective so many Australian animals are doing badly, we should be rejoicing that something is doing well in the city when it could be going extinct in the wild. We need to celebrate the fact they’ve found a way to live with us.”

Darryl’s simple DIY ways to protect crops can be applied to any garden, and allow us to share our space with these native neighbours.

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