Momentum is building for a truly national ban on a popular yabby trap which drowns any air-breathing animal that can fit inside it, including the vulnerable platypus.

So-called opera house traps are a collapsible net with a funnel-shaped entry on each side.

Neil Andison, who works as a platypus guide in Maleny on the Sunshine Coast hinterland, has spent a decade writing to politicians across Queensland in an attempt to highlight the urgency of the issue.

Experts say opera house yabby traps are a threat to Queensland’s platypuses. Credit: Doug Gimesy

And he says it’s not just platypus that become bycatch.

“They’re a death trap,” he says of the traps. Loading

“Anything that breathes air that gets caught in them can’t get out.”

That includes the rakali, also known as the water

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