1080
Original post
There seems to be a lot of news going around about 1080 at the moment. Most of it sensationalised and uninformed.
I'm not keen to get into any of that. But the backcountry and more specifically our flora and fauna is something I am very passionate about.
What I really want to know, is 1080 really worth it and what is the ultimate goal of doc?
I have been involved in conservation for quite awhile. I have run many traplines involved in kiwi conservation. I am passionate about the endemic bird life of aotearoa. It is something I feel intimately spiritually connected to. So am all for conservation, but.
What is the real value of 1080?
I am sure it wipes out mammalian life forms. I'm sure it helps birds re establish themselves in the bush as I have first hand experience of this. But how much and how long do doc I tend to use 1080. Forever?
So they dump 1080 in the bush and it kills predators but how long before they reestablish themselves? How do doc think that they can totally eradicate pests?
How I see it as long as there are human environments there will be rats, stoats, weasels and hedgehogs. They will go where ever they need to go to find food. As long as there are berries and eggs in the bush they will go there. Why did they go there in the first place?
So I would love to know from doc what they really intend from they're assault on our back country with 1080. Do they naively think they can eradicate all threats to endemic bird life from 1080 alone.
I personally believe the time of our endemic bird life may be over. This makes me sad but i am realistic about this. There are factors that don't involve predators that are far more detrimental to endemic birds.
1.Habitat. Birds had domain over these motu. Forest covered the land and where it didn't there was swamp land and grassland and no mammalian predation. Now there are minor islands of endemic flora surrounded by an ocean of rural pasture and urban centres. They are isolated to tiny patches.
2. The presence of introduced bird life far more adapted to human interaction and resource competitors . Sparrows, chaffinch, pigeons, blackbirds etc compete with food and habitat just as much as possums and cats. They keep our endemic birds stuck in they're islands of safety as much as anything else.
Why are we blindly pushing ahead with this 1080 assault? What do we think it will really achieve. Should we start to deal with the fact that our fauna has changed and will never be what it was, what shall we do for our endemic bird life. Will they be nothing more than specimens confined to sanctuaries like mt Bruce and zealandia for us to study.
What kind of studies have doc done on 1080 to our endemic bird life. Have they fed this stuff to kaka, kea and tui?
1080 is a cruel and horrible poison. It really is a horrible way to kill an animal. Is it really worth it. I don't think it is. I don't think it will have any impact on helping us protect our endemic bird life. And if it doesn't I think we should stop it so we don't needlessly put any animals be it deer, pig, possum or stoat through any needless suffering for no point.
All these conservation departments have had negative impacts on our back country. They helped introduce these pests. They planted contorta. They do a lot of things that are incredible stupid and I believe 1080 is another chapter in that history.
28 comments
Theres a limited amount of money to save the animals. Thats one reason why 1080 is used. You can cover large areas with it for the money, and it breaks down reasonably quickly in water so it doesnt remain poisonous.
Kia ora koutou,
When I was down in Dunedin a couple weeks ago, I was surprised to see the level of anti-1080 sentiment -- from hut books to campground signage to even sand art on Karitane beach!
I see this poison as a tool, but an imperfect tool. Problem is that if we wait for a perfect tool, the biodiversity will be gone already. I do believe we can save the taoka of these islands, and I believe we have an obligation to make a best effort, but it all comes down to budgets and priorities. 1080 will not do the job on its own but it might buy us some time.
That's my perspective. Feel free to disagree.
However, just to put on my moderator hat for a moment, can we please keep discussion on this important but divisive issue respectful, i.e. no personal attacks.
@Gaiters, here some good news, that intensive pest control + occasional 1080 drops produces great results. This is the Hunua Ranges, right next to Auckland:
> At the inception of the Hunua Kokako Recovery Project in 1994, there was just one breeding pair of kōkako in the Hunua, due to unchecked predation
by introduced mammals. In fact, there were approximately 26 kōkako at this time, yet 25 were male, due to the increased likelihood of females being preyed upon by possums and stoats, as they alone do all the incubating and brooding duties!
> Thanks to the hard work of countless individuals over the past 24 years, the Hunua kōkako population is well on it's way to recovery. We are happy to announce that over the five week survey, we were able to locate 106 kōkako pairs within the 2,000 hectares of the Hunua Range receiving intensive pest control, an increase from 55 pairs over the same area in 2014, and 25 pairs in 2010. This result means we are now the fifth largest kōkako population in the country, certainly something to sing about!
> When I was down in Dunedin a couple weeks ago, I was surprised to see the level of anti-1080 sentiment -- from hut books to campground signage to even sand art on Karitane beach!
There's certainly been a big push in the last few months from the Operation Ban 1080 movement that centres around its facebook group. That grew as the Hikoi thing approached Wellington.
The whole argument is full of silos of people who spend most of their time talking to people like themselves, often also on the support-1080 side. Social media encourages it to happen even more.
A bit that concerns me is that a small handful of people are outright lying and taking advantage of the movement and actively abusing the trust of others. I find it really hard to be polite about those people these days. Among other things, when someone shows up with real and genuine concerns that can be worth talking about or addressing, they rapidly get sucked into a storm of lies and craziness and (sometimes) people trying to take advantage of them for whatever their own selfish causes are. It can be difficult to distinguish, and also difficult to have a proper conversation about things that are true.
Exactly. I am always dubious of people who push agendas too far in either direction. I want proven balanced facts that are brave enough to push their viewpoints as a well as any on the opposite side.
There has been some terrible anti 1080 campaigning going on at the moment which is pure lies and its is fooling people that otherwise wouldn't know any better and assume it to be truth.
When someone like myself has genuine concerns but are still pro the cause it tends to make guys like yarmoss pop out and try to rip me apart like I'm one of them without reading what I'm really trying to say.
The passion on both sides is ridiculous.
But I feel it's a bit of a kiwi thing to put all our eggs in one basket a bit and hope for the best, that's a bit of a generalised statement but I'm sure many understand. It's like fonterra, or the wool industry etc etc.
There are many options to help protect our endemic wildlife, but few if any to make them flourish.
For instance.
Look at project kaka in the tararua. It was really becoming devoid of bird life. A huge 1080 dump took place. I went in 6 months later and there was what felt like abundant bird life but if I look back I saw a kaka on the saddle up to baldy and one on the ridgeline to Neill forks. At the time I was like wow, it works.
I had a picnic with my missus in the botanical gardens under a pohutukawa tree and there were six kaka in it. No 1080 there but a fenced sanctuary a couple Km away.
That's were I'm heading for with my argument if you can read between the lines.
1
I guess it's hard to know with sporadic sightings. Kaka get around from what I understand, and near that side of the Tararua there's also Pukaha Mt Bruce. I think Kaka often flock over from there, but maybe they stay for longer if there's more food and fewer pests when they're trying to breed.
The Wellington thing might be a special case. Kaka and other birds have really been spilling out over the Zealandia fence in the last few years as you say, which is awesome. Even tieke are now coming over the fence to some nearby parts of suburbia, although they'd probably still struggle to breed outside at this time. Compare with 20 years ago, however, where there were something like 6 known pairs of Tui in all of Wellington. Now they're uncountable.
There's no 1080, but since the mid to late 90s there's definitely been much more intense pest control in the reserves by the councils and community groups. Another contributing factor is that the population's relatively dense (being a city) and in the last few years there have been increasing numbers of people participating in back-yard trapping projects, which couldn't really be replicated in a Conservation Area where nobody lives, for obvious reasons. It's been accelerating, too. You can do this sort of thing because lots and lots of people live here, relatively close together, and most people do very little amongst everything else they do in life but it all adds up within that occupied space. I think people have been seeing these birds in their gardens, recognising and enjoying the change, and it's starting to inspire people to want to keep them.
But Wellington's not an adequate habitat for something like Whio, for example, which like riding up and down wild rivers. It's not a habitat for Kea (if it were even the right island), which are quite territorial and often like a whole spur to themselves in a wide area when breeding. There's a wild idea to make some space for kiwi, probably out in some of the back blocks, but that's probably only going to benefit tangentially from whatever pest control is presently happening in the suburban places where most people live (and don't even mention cats).
Then there times like when I tramped the Waioeka and saw more whio than anywhere else I've been, just dozens of the buggers, ironically on the same rivers I saw tons of stoats sunning themselves on the rocks.
Be interesting to see when I go back there this summer if the whio are still abundant,
"When someone like myself has genuine concerns but are still pro the cause it tends to make guys like yarmoss pop out and try to rip me apart like I'm one of them without reading what I'm really trying to say."
Get a grip, dude.
You slag off DOC repeatedly in your OP, then when I defend them you ignore everything I said on my follow up, while name calling me and breaking several forum rules... a recurring theme with you recently, I notice, must be nice being allowed to flaunt rules like that.
http://www.1080facts.co.nz/
check this out Gaiters
Is probably promotes 1080 a bit. And may or may not understate the negatives. But the site is intended to state the benefits of 1080.
There is plenty of references to research, I suggest looking at them.
A basic concept about pest "control" that's already been mentioned here, is that it is NOT eradication. Nearly all pests (including weeds, insects) are controlled, only.
The strategies for pests are either do nothing (accept the threat), Sustained control or eradication
Animals like deer, Tahr have been under sustained control since the 1930s. But theyre still here. So long as the remaining population is not at a level that impacts on biodiversity values, then that isn't a problem.
Ditto worth possums
Rat/other predator control is relatively new on the mainland, and will follow other control methods.
So because there were supposedly 60 million possums30years ago, and theres still 60 or 30mil or whatever, is irrelevant. Its the removal of impacts on biodiversity that's important. Controlof pests by 1080 was never intended to eradicate them
For eradication to be successful, there has to be no chance of reinfestation (islands, sanctuaries etc)
That kaka are abundant in wellington has no relevance to Tararua kaka. you will find the same result around Pukaha mt bruce. Theyre living Insanctuaries that are pest free (or almost)
Theres always been only a few kaka in the Tararuas, ever since I began tramping in the 1960s. theyre still threre in the same places.
check out the DOC project kaka reports re whats happening
https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/project-kaka/
IMO it will be a long time before an abundance of kaka will be seen again. other species may be different
beware of the extreme anti or pro 1080 internet forums.
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| Forum | The campfire |
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| Started by | Gaiters |
| On | 5 October 2018 |
| Replies | 27 |
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