COURTESY OF BING IMAGES

Possums, like these babies shown above, have been called the unsung heros in the Lyme disease epidemic

“In staggering numbers, opossums  up removing or eating as much as 96 percent of all ticks that land on them. … Possums are the unsung heroes in the Lyme disease epidemic.“ ~ Rick Ostfeld, Cary Institute

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has invested great effort in recruiting and training thousands of new trappers and hunters with $5 license incentives. They’re destroying Wisconsin’s indigenous species like beavers, muskrat, foxes, bobcats, otters, coyotes, raccoons and opossums.

We never seem to learn from history. Market trapping and hunting back in the 1850s, when wildlife was abundant and humans much less so, almost destroyed wildlife even then.

Coyotes, wolves, foxes, bobcats and opossums are exactly the species that control rodents and buffer humans from zoonotic diseases. Diseases that are transmitted by animals…