CONTROL OF OPOSSUMS

Press, Volume C, Issue 29510, 11 May 1961, Page 18

CONTROL OF OPOSSUMS

Views Of Boards’ Council

The original scheme for rabbit boards to accept the additional expense of killing opossums was promulgated on the basis of a £3 for £1 subsidy. The Rabbit Destruction Council said it would »not negotiate on any basis without first referrin? the matter to all rabbit boards, but it failed to honour this promise, said the secretary of the North Canterbury Rabbit Boards’ Council (Mr P J Byrne) yesterday.

Mr Byrne was giving the council's reasons for adopting remits that the rabbit boards should not be asked to take on the work of opossum eradication except on the basis of a £3 for £1 subsidy. and that the bounty should be continued until the boards had taken over the control of opossums. At the council’s annual meeting recently, the deputychairman of the Rabbit Destruction Council (Mr J. D. Shine) had said he could not understand what had prompted the council to pass the remits.

“The council is disappointed in Mr Shine’s lack of understanding.” said Mr Byrne. “The Rabbit Destruction Council has given excuses for its failure which seem inadequate to our rabbit boards.” The action of the Rabbit Destruction Council in negotiating the opossum scheme on a £1 for £1 subsidy basis instead of a £3 for £1 basis would, if it was not altered, cost the farmer ratepayers three times as much as the rabbit boards agreed to.