The brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) might look harmless, but it’s one of New Zealand’s most destructive introduced species. Originally brought from Australia in the 1800s for the fur trade, possums have no natural predators here, and their population exploded. Estimates once put their numbers at over 70 million nationwide (now reduced through control but still in the tens of millions). Each night, a single possum can eat around 400 grams of vegetation, that’s roughly 21,000 tonnes of na