Ask the Warden

eelgrass

Long Time Member
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31,363
In California, of course.

March 30, 2017

Question: My city neighbor is now renting a home and has taken it upon himself to trap local opossums and release them elsewhere. He says he is taking them to a county road (Dry Creek) but there is no way to verify this. We have lived in our home for 15 years and so we, along with our neighbors, are concerned. We have lived with the possums and raccoons for a lot of years without issues. This tenant intends to exterminate them. Is there anything we can do? (Tyler)

Answer: ?All furbearing and nongame mammals that are legal to trap must be immediately euthanized or released? (California Code of Regulations Title 14, section 465.5(g)(1)). So it is not legal to transport opossums elsewhere for release. Possums should not be ?relocated? from where they were trapped for many reasons, the most important being to prevent the spread of disease, and immediately releasing the opossums would not take care of the ?pest? problem that your neighbor probably wants to solve. There are other options that you could inform your neighbor about though. ?Keep me Wild? is a campaign that strives to limit conflicts between wild animals and humans. More information about how your neighbor can avoid problems with opossums may be found at the Keep Me Wild website.
 
Yep, after reading the Regulation, the originator of the question is perfectly correct, the neighbor is now going to exterminate them.

As is often the case, "be careful what you ask for".

DC
 
LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-17 AT 10:11PM (MST)[p]wtf cares what he does with them???....opossums have no redeeming qualities....
 
>LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-17
>AT 10:11?PM (MST)

>
>wtf cares what he does with
>them???....opossums have no redeeming qualities....
>

They've even made their way up to the rain forest of Humboldt. Worse than worthless and ugly.
 

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