OPOSSUM SKINS

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1937, Page 16

OPOSSUM SKINS

A SMUGGLING RING. SYDNEY, April 15. Huge quantities of the skins of opossums, which are protected animals, are being smuggled out of Australia. Police state that there is an extensive organisation doing an enormous illciit trade in opossum skins in New South Wales.

This organisation, it is alleged, exports skins to ready markets in America and Britain as wool and other products. The organisation has agents in Sydney and suburbs, and its trap-" pers and poisoners are spread over the State. It has letter-boxes in fictitious names at various post offices in the suburbs, to which the agents in New South Wales and Queensland send news of the dispatch of consignments. Opossum skins are tfever mentioned in any communication. They are always called “apples," “lettuce,” “vegetables,” or some other product. Agents collect the consignments from suburban stations, and lake them to various “dumps," where they are pressed into wool packs. Nine inches of wool is pressed on the outside of the opossum skins, which are packed in the centre. The smuggling organisation has a fleet of cars in the country, registered under fictitious names.

At the recent hearing in a country town of charges against several men engaged in this illicit slaughter and trade, police witnesses said that the use of cyanide baits to poison opossums often resulted in stock being poisoned, stock losses through this cause in Australia being estimated at £1,000,000 a year. They also told a story of efforts, which they thought, would be successful, to break up the smuggling organisation. A letter intended for a New South Wales agent led them to its writer in Queensland. His information took the detectives to other men in New South Wales and Victoria, and as a result the whole ramifications of the organisation were exposed.