Tapora farmers aim for pest free peninsula
LANDCARE FARMERS: Some of the group involved with ridding the Okahukura Peninsula of pests, from left, John Lane, Bryan Bingley, Savanna, trapper Kerry Johnson, Wally McConnell, and Andre Hekkers.
Drive along any country road at night and you will almost inevitably catch a possum in your headlights.
Some drivers try to avoid them, while others take aim.
But drive around Tapora on the Okahukura Peninsula west of Wellsford, and you will find possums are strangely absent.
Rather than an anomaly, this is the result of seven years hard work by a group of local farmers.
"There used to be so much possum road kill the hawks could hardly get off the ground after feeding on them, " says Tapora Land and Coast Care Group founder and chairman, beef farmer Wally McConnell.
"After catching two possums a night for three weeks around my wife’s newly planted rose bushes, I decided enough was enough too," says treasurer and sheep and beef farmer John Lane. They applied for funding from the New Zealand Lotteries and the ASB Community Trust.