Discovery

From Furry Friend to Fatal Fiend

This is the winning entry from the 1993 NZSM School Science Journalism Competition.

By Louise Shaw

It is difficult to appreciate now that 110 years ago the possum was a protected marsupial. Only after complaints from orchardists was that status reversed in 1950. The fur trade then established itself in New Zealand. It was said then, and until recent years, "everyone with two legs and a four-wheel drive was out trapping." The fur industry kept possum numbers down, employed thousands of New Zealanders and made a place for our country in the overseas markets.

After the recent slanderous attacks on the fur trade in general by organisations such as Greenpeace to stop such things as the seal slaughter and gin trapping, the cost and sales of furs have plummeted. Other factors contributing to this have been three consecutive warm northern hemisphere winters, over-production, high fur prices and a major share market crash immediately prior to the 1985 trading year. This has caused the possum fur industry in New Zealand to almost totally disappear, resulting in a major possum population boom, as low skin prices have discouraged trappers.

There are now over seventy million possums in New Zealand (in real terms, 20 for each man woman and child in this country.) The 20 tonnes of foliage they devour in 24 hours could soon easily overfill a container ship. The longer these seemingly-adorable little animals are left to multiply, the greater the number of container ships leaving our ports never to return, taking with them also valuable chicks and eggs such as the endangered kokako which they consume, as recently discovered by environmental researchers using special time-lapse infrared cameras.

The government allocates $3 million a year to the destruction of the possum. This goes towards 1080 drops, which are becoming questionable as the possums' immunity systems seem to be growing. And without special bait feeders, other animals (especially ground-feeding birds such as kaka) are at a high risk either through direct poisoning or through food chains in the ecosystem. Money is also spent on spotlighting, cage trapping and investigations into more advanced and humane trapping techniques as well as biological controls.

Department of Conservation (DOC) officials have said that possums have spread across too wide a front for them to be able to hold them. All that they can do to save a piece of our heritage is to pick a number of islands or areas they think they can defend and try and preserve them.

So what do we do? We have learned our lesson the hard way and must support the DOC members in their seemingly endless battle. Why do we need lots of strange animals roaming our unique landscape anyway? We can keep their numbers down in some places, such as fencing off the tip of the Coromandel peninsula, so that our nation's indigenous and exotic beauty can still be preserved for the future. Hopefully through some miraculous freak of nature a solution will be found and this "furry critter" will be the one disappearing.

We were pleased to see the diverse range of topics and concerns covered by pupils entering the NZSM School Science Journalism Competition. Urban planning, the physics of flight and whether boys make better maths students all came under scrutiny.

Reporting on a scientific issue for general reading is a very different thing from writing up a scientific experiment. School homework and learned journals tend to use the "introduction-aim-method-results-conclusions" approach which methodically follows through a standard sequence.

Journalism usually requires a writer to go in the opposite direction, with the emphasis on what has happened (the results) and why (the conclusions). Following that, are the details of how the results were achieved or background on any work that had been done beforehand.

The importance of communicating science clearly and accurately is being recognised with the development of science communication courses at a number of universities and the occasional science option in journalism courses at tertiary level.

Louise Shaw is a 7th Form pupil at Rotorua Lakes High School.