MAKING A CASE FOR POSSUM RIGHTS
Rheya Linden from Animal Active! interviewed by Claudette Vaughan

Rheya Linden is the brains and driving force behind the Victorian-based group, Animal Active! Here, for the Abolitionist, she makes a convincing case for possum rights.

Abolitionist: Can you make the case for us for possum rights please?

Rheya Linden: Possums share the same rights as any other sentient being, deserving equality of consideration or more simply, a right to live without unnecessary interference or suffering caused by human intervention.

As a native wildlife species, all possums are legally protected under the various state-based wildlife legislations such as the Wildlife Act 1975 (Victoria). However when it comes to the humble Common Brushtail Possum legal protection provides no protection at all.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment(DSE) the state Department that should administer the provisions of the Act protecting all wildlife species has not in living memory prosecuted for cruelty against possums although cruelty cases abound. Nor does the RSPCA respond effectively to reported cases of possum cruelty.

It could be said that Animal Active’s campaign for urban wildlife is more about possum wrongs than possum rights: possums are labelled as “pests” and subjected to cruelty with impunity. In fact pest control companies include possums on their advertising list of animals they will eradicate for a fee. By parallel status possums are the “battery caged hens” of Australian wildlife species, regarded by most people as not worthy of consideration. Those who try to protect possum rights constantly find themselves on the back foot, fighting community attitudes characterized by the frequently uttered response that “it’s only a possum”.

Abolitionist: Why does the legislation in place to protect all wildlife species fail to protect possums?

Rheya Linden: In Victoria the legal protection offered to Common Brushtail Possums has been watered down by a demonic piece of legislation introduced in 2003 whereby local councils can catch and kill Brushtail possums without a permit and no more justification than that they simply do not fit in with park management plans. Councils now have the option of killing park-dwelling possums passively by means of metal tree collars that trap animals in their habitat trees consigning them to slow deaths by starvation and dehydration, or actively by trapping and euthanasia.

Animal Active has campaigned extensively for a ban on metal tree collars with occasional success Some Councils, such as the City of Yarra in inner suburban Melbourne, where our first campaign for urban wildlife began six years ago, no longer use tree collars. Recently Animal Active’s urban wildlife campaign identified tree removal as yet another local council activity that results in immense suffering for Brushtail Possums.

As nocturnal animals wishing to escape sunlight possums sleep in tree hollows; during tree cutting their tendency is to dig down deeply inside the tree in a vain attempt to escape the sound of the chainsaw only to become victims to it as it severs their bodies along with the hollow branch or trunk. We have recently begun to take our campaign for urban wildlife to tree lopping sites with actions “bearing witness” to any resultant cruelty and raising awareness through blockades, media and lobbying, to the necessity of employing a wildlife rescue team to check each tree in order to remove and relocate any resident possum ahead of the chainsaw gangs.

We have already had one spectacular success! Melbourne City Council became a convert to this campaign due to media presence and permitted our volunteer rescue teams to relocate thirty five possums from a row of trees being cut down in one of its municipal parks. Possum boxes erected in nearby trees and paid for by council, provided alternative accommodation for displaced animals. Of course “hands on” campaigning at tree lopping sites doesn’t prevent the removal of mature trees; possums are displaced, their safety jeopardized by the loss of habitat hollows but at least they escape with their limbs and lives intact. Our campaign goal is to pressure council arborists to include wildlife surveys and humane relocation strategies as a matter of policy so that consideration to possum welfare will be guaranteed even when we are not there to “bear witness”.

Abolitionist: Your founded, Animal Active! took legal action against Port Philip Council in a bid to save Catani Garden's possums. What happened?

Rheya Linden: We did seek legal advice regarding our standing to take injunctive action against Port Phillip Council in order to prevent the metal banding of Canary Island Palms that currently provide habitat for an entire colony of around 50 possums. We are still in process with regard to this frequently confrontational campaign. However it seems that the 2003 legislation I have referred to has eliminated even the barest legal grounds on which we can defend possum rights within the urban landscape. Councils have all the power and are not required to be transparent in their decisions and processes.

A robust direct action campaign is still ongoing in Catani Gardens, and gathering welcome support from local residents many of whom love and want to help save their urban wildlife.

We had a campaign coup recently with the release of documents we applied for through Freedom of Information; these included emailed advice by council staff on how to dispatch the Catani Gardens’ possums by means of anaesthetizing them as they slept during the day and placing their bodies in black bags for removal so as not to alert the public. The sinister plan made for a great media expose that has placed Port Phillip council on the back foot for the moment but we remain alert to their next move against the besieged and bewildered animals who are waking up at dusk each day in palms they have occupied for over a century to find that their paths to the ground to forage for food are blocked by 2-metre wide metal bands on the surface of which their claws are useless. They either fall to the ground metres below, or starve in the palms.

Abolitionist: Can you educate us to the amazing personalities and friendliness of the possum Rheya?

Rheya Linden: After 5 years as unofficial ambassadors for possums in Melbourne’s Curtain Square(go to the Urban Possum Action page on our website for the back-story on this successful campaign) Animal Active volunteers can all testify that 99.9% of visitors, including children and tourists, are delighted with the approachable but still wild resident possums. We have dispelled absurd myths about “possums leaping out of trees and tearing at people’s faces” or that they have “voracious appetites and will devour entire trees”. With familiarity the unique possum qualities are recognized: territorial but unaggressive possums have individual and diverse personalities, display effective parenting skills including “tough love” when they decide it is time the young left home, who enjoy a veg diet and adore super-sweet and over-ripe fruit and, when they are sure they can trust the encounter with humans can be called down from their trees for supper.

When it comes to charm nothing can better represent possums the image of "Johny" a baby possum taken from its mother's back by an off-leash dog . Lucky johny ! The canine culprit understood the "drop"command and as he fell out of the dog's jaws was scooped up and removed to a wildlife care centre by an Animal Active volunteer. "Johny" is now robust enough to live in his own possum box in which he will soon be relocated to a suitable tree..

Abolitionist: John Kelly has 2 possum slaughterhouses based in Tasmania. What do you know about them?

Rheya Linden: As with all slaughterhouses, they are undoubtedly places of terror and cruelty where sentient animals are dragged, as we would be, kicking and screaming, to their deaths. Undercover footage of practices shot by animal activists inside Kelly’s slaughter houses have revealed immense suffering.

John Kelly is to be condemned not only for the suffering perpetrated on possums but also his enthusiastic support of the commercially-motivated mass killing of kangaroos. As head of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia he has made many absurd claims about commercial kangaroo killing as a humane practice, of course failing to mention small but integral details of the process such as the expedient bludgeoning of millions of baby kangaroos that are left for dead in the outback, “waste products” of their mothers conversion to carcasses for the meat and leather trade. John Kelly is the man who attempted to urge Aussies not to baulk at eating our national icon by the unconvincing comparison with Canadians who, whilst revering the maple leaf as a national symbol, process and eat maple syrup by the bucketful.

Unfortunately John Kelly has the support of many in the conservation fraternity who consider that killing possums, kangaroos and other wildlife species for human consumption, referred to and sanitised as “bush food”, is an act of environmentalism. Unwilling to adopt a veg diet as the only environmentally –viable option, they kid themselves that they can continue to titillate their palates with flesh and save the planet at the same time. Their reasoning is as ludicrous as Kelly’s comparison of a leaf with a kangaroo, as it is based on the naïve belief that the sheep and cattle barons are going to move over and allow their industries to be replaced by “wildlife harvests”. In their zeal to ensure meat on the plate many environmentalists have forgotten that commercial exploitation of any wild species will sooner or later bring it to the brink of extinction. Kangaroos and possums are no more plentiful or no less subject to population crashes than rhinos, elephants, whales or any other now endangered species.

Abolitionist: Where are possum exports going to and what are their skin and meats used for?

Rheya Linden: Kelly exports possum meat to Japan and other place is South East Asia; there is also an emerging possum fur trade with recent attempts to establish an Oz market. The products generated by a New Zealand company,” Possum Pam” include trinkets and trivia such as possum fur nipple warmers are sold in Australia . Last winter wool hats and scarves made from a mix of possum fur and merino wool hit the market.

Abolitionist: Is it possible to campaign against the carrier that takes the possum meat overseas?

Rheya Linden: Sure. That would be a useful focus but more fundamentally there is an urgent need to correct public perceptions. Unless people stop seeing possums as “pests”, “tree rats”, “breeding in plague proportions” the Possum will remain the target of public cruelty and legislative disregard as well as commercial exploitation.

I was horrified, but not surprised at his lack of higher aspirations, to read a comment from our current Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, that when (if!) he becomes Prime Minister of Australia his goal will be to rid Melbourne of possums. That comment, which appeared in The Age (Melbourne Magazine Vol 14) in December 2005 was the trigger for Animal Active’s “I ♥ possums …and I vote” campaign debuted at the recent State election and is currently waiting in the wings for a forthcoming Council election in Port Phillip municipality.

Abolitionist: What is the Australian Green Party's stance on Possums?

Rheya Linden: There is no national Greens’ animal policy. I was part of a working group that drafted the now official Vic Greens Animal policy that has a strongly pro- wildlife stance that endorses the rights of wildlife to habitat and protection in both urban and bush environments and opposes the commercial slaughter of all wildlife species.

However I have found that in debating the possum issue with environmentalists there emerges an uncritical support of Councils’ bid to eradicate possums on the false assumption that this will save trees. Animal Active has been invited to attend the April meeting of the Port Phillip Greens to present our campaign for the Catani Gardens possums, an opportunity to disperse prevailing myths that will hopefully result in more local defenders of the Catani possums.

Abolitionist: Name some facts that are not well known about the possum.

Rheya Linden: One of the most widespread myths is that possums are resilient survivors, breeding in plague proportions and overpopulated wherever they are to be found. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although urban possums lack traditional predators such as owls and dingoes, they have new predators in the form of cars, off-leash dogs and people who are not prepared to share the urban environment. Through increased urbanization natural habitat for possums and other native species has diminished to an alarming extent. The capacity of possums to adapt to the presence of houses in place of trees makes them unwanted visitors in roofs and gardens, generating a thriving business for wildlife controllers. A recent ABC Stateline feature titled “Why are possums disappearing?”(http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/sa/) leaves us in no doubt that the Common Brushtail Possum is under population stress in Australian cities, sounding alarm bells about the future of the unique but unappreciated possums in our midst.

Abolitionist: What does the future hold in store for the Possum in Australia?

Rheya Linden: Animal Active! continues to campaign in defence of possums and the Yarra Council experience that began confrontationally but has resulted in positive dialogue and good outcomes for urban wildlife gives us reason to hope. It is still slow progress with other local councils, such as Melbourne, but with each confrontation on behalf of urban possums, followed by our ongoing presence in local parks where the issues have arisen, we are seeing encouraging changes at the grass roots, proof that community attitudes can be altered with persistence.

Evidence for this is an online article about the Catani Gardens possum campaign that was published on ABC Radio’s 774 website early in 2006 which continues to gather bulletin board comments, the majority being decidedly pro-possum. I think this reflects a positive outcome from the exposure this campaign has received. (Visit the page and add your comment at: http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/stories/s1569606.htm)

By contrast Treasurer Costello’s attitude to possums, as represented by his thoughtless throwaway line, is reckless and irresponsible because it feeds the public perception of possums as worthless and dispensable. We will definitely be taking the “I love Possums and I vote” campaign up to the Liberals in the lead-up to the next federal election!

Ed's note: At the time of going to press the Australian Greens new animal policy wasn't up on their website. It is now.