How many possums make a cow?
The importance of possums as competitors with livestock for pasture is sometimes used as justification for possum control. Unfortunately a confusion of wet and dry weight values of pasture and daily consumption by possums appears to have resulted in a significant overestimate of the economic costs of possums as pasture pests. A correctly estimated daily dry matter intake of pasture by possums is 0.0144 kg pasture dry matter per possum per day. For a possum density of 1 ha-1, this amounts to a reduction of about 1% of a stock unit ha-1 year-1.