<\/p>\n
Platypuses can get stuck and drown in opera house nets. (Supplied: Australian Platypus Conservancy)<\/p>\n
Australian Platypus Conservancy director Geoff Williams said Melbourne’s outer fringe and the Gippsland region were the state’s worst hot spots for the continued use of banned traps.<\/p>\n
“Enclosed nets of any sort are illegal, it’s illegal to use them, it’s even illegal to possess them,” he said.<\/p>\n
A platypus drowned in this crab pot in the Tarra River near Yarram. (Supplied: T Bock)<\/p>\n
“The giveaway to finding these illegal nets is \u2026 a piece of string that’s coming out of the water and attaching to a tree or a stake on the riverbank,” Mr Williams told ABC Statewide Drive.<\/p>\n
“And because they are set under the water, once a platypus or rakali [water rat] go inside, they find it very difficult to find the exit again \u2026 and consequently, within two or three minutes they drown.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Williams said platypus were officially considered vulnerable in many areas of Victoria.<\/p>\n
“Any death that is caused by traps or other illegal activities can knock a big hole in the population, and because platypuses can travel quite long distances, a trap set in one place can potentially kill several in a night.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The platypus is considered vulnerable in parts of Victoria. (Supplied: John Bundock)<\/p>\n
Mr Williams said the two Gippsland incidents came off the back of a disturbing case in mid-July at Yarra Junction, 55 kilometres east of Melbourne, when three platypuses were killed in two days.<\/p>\n
“The person set the net one day, killed one platypus and then came back the next day and put the trap in place again and killed another two, knowing that risk was there,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) is investigating the Gippsland platypus deaths.<\/p>\n
It has urged people to use alternative open-top pyramid traps for catching yabbies and freshwater crayfish.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information about illegal trapping is urged to contact the VFA Hotline on 13FISH (133 474).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anglers are being reminded to dispose of illegal opera house nets and other enclosed traps after two platypuses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7914,6349,57480,43,96711,96712,44,96708,96706,96710,41,39,42,40,96709,96707],"class_list":["post-141990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australian-platypus-conservancy","tag-fishing","tag-gippsland","tag-headlines","tag-illegal-nets","tag-illegal-traps","tag-news","tag-opera-house-nets","tag-platypus","tag-platypuses-found-dead","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-victorian-fisheries-authority","tag-yabby-nets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}