Dead dassies cause concern

Gray witnessed this sight on 27 April. He explained that his first thought was that the dassies had been poisoned. Gray believed the dassies had been living in Cedar Hill Estate and suspected that the estate management had poisoned them. “There were three of them lying outside the estate perimeter fence and they had white foam coming out of their mouths,” Gray said.

Nicky Hansen, estate manager of Cedar Hills Estate, said while the estate did have a problem with the ever-expanding dassie population, they absolutely refused to resort to poisoning. “We have pets in the estate too so we’d never use poison,” she said. “We’ve actually been looking into alternative methods to deal with the dassie problem.”

Nicci Wright of FreeMe Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre confirmed that her organisation was working with Cedar Hills Estate, along with urban wildlife experts, EcoSolutions. “Together with Jonathen Haw from EcoSolutions, a management plan is being formulated,” she said. ” I doubt that the estate management would be poisoning the dassies as they were concerned about employing a humane solution for both the dassies and rodents.”

Wright said it was possible that the dassies had ingested poison elsewhere and died while they were returning home to the estate.

She added that it is impossible to identify poisoning from photographs. “If poison was used, one would presume that it would be rodenticide which is easily available,” she said. “Rodenticide poisoning induces internal haemorrhage which results in bleeding from the body.”

Wright recommended that if any more carcasses are found, they should be brought through to FreeMe Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre as soon as possible as post-mortems can then be done to determine the cause of death.

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