by
Julie Moffat
Wildlife rescuer, volunteer with WIRES, Inner Sydney
• Young brushies sharing a box
There are 2 wildlife rescue organisations active in Sydney:
Wires (wires.org.au) and
Sydney Wildlife Rescue (sydneywildlife.org.au)
On both websites there are links to very useful resources with information about some of our unique and special Sydney animals.
Wires offers a free online Educational Community Course. Sydney Wildlife has links with information about local native species.
Volunteers (such as me) for these rescue organisations are licenced by NSW National Parks and Wildlife, and undergo species specific training.
We are thankful when members of the public are caring, & call a rescue organisation when they have found an injured or orphaned native animal or bird, or they can contain and take the animal to a vet for assessment & possible treatment. The vet will then call the rescue organisation for a volunteer to collect, for care or release.
I rescue wildlife for Wires and do this in the inner west Sydney suburbs.
• Baby brushtail bottle feeding
Ringtail Possums and Brushtail Possums
Possums are mammals, very shy, and they commonly sleep in nests (dreys) in trees, hollows in trees, in roof cavities, sheds. They are nocturnal. This is a link to a Wires video titled how to build a ringtail possum drey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAfzvOvAmM
If there is a possum moving around in the day, or curled up on the ground it is normally a sign the animal is sick, injured or orphaned. Possums may be injured from a car strike, a fall from a height, cat or dog attack, rat bait poisoning, tree and habitat destruction, burnt paws from hot surfaces (metal surfaces, power lines, roofs). On many occasions the possum may be deceased but has a live pouch joey/s. In these instances the animals need assistance, possible vet treatment, and care, before release.
• Fireplace rescue
Other examples of rescues I’ve been involved in include: possums falling down chimneys and becoming trapped behind the fireplace, falling down in the lightwell space of terraces and becoming trapped, becoming trapped in netting or between fence palings.
• Tail trap rescue
Adult possums need to be returned to their home range when they have received care and are recovered. Their home range is approximately 100m of where they have been rescued, so the location of their rescue is important.
• Cat attack wounds
Baby possums (joeys) come into care if they have separated from their mother (falling off mother’s back), or their mother has died. The joeys remain in care for a considerable length of time. Depending on their age it can be 6-12 months.
Ringtails are a smaller animal and reach release age quicker than brushtails.
We buddy them with similar age/weight babies so they grow together and are released together. Ringtails are more of a social animal and live in groups, so we can buddy them in pods usually around 4 in a pod.
• Released ringtail in drey
¶ • Arborist climbing attaching drey
• Ringtails inside their drey
We make them a drey, similar to the drey/nest they might build in the urban wild, and release the pod in their drey into a suitable tree in a suitable location.
• Young ringtails eating foliage
Brushtails are more of a solitary animal and we buddy with one another. We build them a possum box that might in a sense be like a tree hollow, and we release the brushies in their box into a suitable tree in a suitable location.
We are restricted to areas for release that are within our branch boundaries, and certain areas we cannot release (like National Parks)
The routine for volunteers with animals in care includes this range of actions:
• Baby ringtail pod lapping
Making up milk formula. We feed by bottle or in a dish for lapping. The formula is specialised for possums and the quantity and no. feeds/day is set out in charts according to the animal’s age & weight (eg 6 feeds/day, 2ml/feed).
Collecting foliage. The diet of our native possums relies heavily on the foliage and flowers of our native tree species. In our urban environment they have adapted to eat foliage of non native plants. Wildlife volunteers have to continuously identify suitable trees to collect foliage from. And it needs to be somewhat fresh. And the animals can be somewhat fussy. It is a more challenging task in the summer heat when foliage can dry out rapidly, and in winter when there isn’t a lot of new growth and deciduous trees have dropped their leaves.
Assessing areas suitable for releasing possums. When the babies have reached release age the locations for release need to have suitable trees with connecting canopies and a suitable area, to ensure their best chances to survive and thrive.
Liasing with arborists that are kind enough to volunteer their time and skills to climb into the trees and attach the dreys or boxes. Otherwise we have to complete the release task by ladder.
Julie