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Get involved in backyard trapping
Trapping in your backyard has loads of benefits. It can help get rid of rats from your compost bin, save your roses and fruit trees from possums, but most importantly it can make your garden a safe place for our unique native wildlife to live and feed.
Rats
If you’re just targeting backyard rats, we recommend the Victor Professional trap and tunnel and/or the Goodnature A24 self-resetting trap or T-Rex in a tunnel.
1. The Victor Professional rat trap in a tunnel
This is an affordable and effective trap that is great for any backyard. The trap sits in a long wooden box, so it’s safe for children and pets. You can buy a Victor Professional rat trap and tunnel from our online shop. If you live in an area where there are weka present you’ll need to buy a slightly longer, weka-proof tunnel, which is also available from our shop.
You can also make your own tunnel to house a Victor Professional rat trap by following our guide.
Quick tips:
- Make sure you always wear gloves when handling your trap or catches.
- Set up 2-3 Victor Professional rat traps in your backyard and make sure they are placed inside rat tunnels. Place the trap at the back of the tunnel (opposite the small entrance hole), away from small fingers.
- Place the tunnels on a flat surface near walls/compost or under cover.
- Bait traps with some peanut butter and refresh often.
- Check your traps every couple of days until you’re getting results and the catch rate goes down, then check every 2-3 weeks. The more rats in the area, the more checks you will need to do.
See more advice (including a demonstration video) on setting, baiting and checking the Victor Professional rat trap.
2. T-Rex trap in a tunnel
The T-Rex rat trap is an affordable and easy to use trap that is great for any backyard. The trap sits in a long wooden box, so it’s safe for children and pets. These are also available from our online shop and you can learn how to use the T-Rex here.
You can also make your own tunnel to house a T-Rex rat trap by following our guide.
3. The Goodnature self-resetting Smart Trap
If you don’t want to handle dead rats or reset a trap too often, this is a great option. The Smart Trap is self-resetting and needs to be checked monthly or to the manufacturer’s specifications. Any rats it catches generally get scavenged, so you won’t necessarily see your catches.
Make sure you always wear gloves when handling your trap or catches.
The Goodnature Smart Trap is available from our shop, and you can also read our information on bait advice and instructions for placement.
For a print-friendly summary of backyard rat trapping, download our quick trapping guide (PDF, 255KB).
Possums
We recommend using either the Flipping Timmy or Trapinator to trap possums.
1. Flipping Timmy
The new Flipping Timmy possum trap is based on the Timms trap. It is mounted vertically (removing the need to bend over) which ensures a clean catch area.
See our tips on setting up the Flipping Timmy.
Use this sweet flour paste recipe as a lure to attract possums to your bait stations or traps.
The Flipping Timmy is available from our shop.
2. Trapinator
This is a simple and effective way of trapping low density possum populations and can be purchased from our online shop. See our tips on setting up your Trapinator.
Use this sweet flour paste recipe as a lure to attract possums to your bait stations or traps.
To learn more about trapping different types of predators in a range of areas (backyards, farms, bush blocks etc.), see our trapping and baiting toolkit.
