The battle against possums in Bell Block is about to enter an urban warfare stage. The Taranaki Regional Council is planning to extend its rural voluntary pest control programme into Bell Block and other areas. The council’s self-help pest control programme, which also targets rats and stoats, has been running across 235,000ha of farmland on the ring plain since the 1990s, and this year the plan is to take it urban. “The aim is to control possums in urban Bell Block to enhance biodiversity values – birds, native vegetation, critters and lizards,” Mr Hall said. The programme would comprise a combination of traps and bait stations. At present New Plymouth District Council carries out possum control in the city’s parks, reserves and walkways. Landowners with properties backing onto these areas would be invited to join the project with the aim of plugging the gaps where pests ran unchecked. Private landowners would be able to choose the method of control they preferred. “We have some bait stations in high biodiversity areas, like Hickford Park in Bell Block. There’s lots of areas throughout the whole district with really good pockets of bush.”
