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
My comment about kaka, relates to the Tararuas. they are prolific in karori and pukaha, because of intensive control / eradication. ie stoats etc.
also, the Tararuas is a good example of impacts of pest. species like kokako, kiwi, robins , whio etc became locally extinct long before 1080 was ever used
kaka and other populations are decimated.
all through predation or habitat destruction
I'm involved in a kokako protection program and we have a 5 yearly 1080 drop, the other years are done by a very labour intensive ground baiting program, over rugged country. If the labour had to be paid for it would make the program cost prohibitive. Something like 2000hrs a year and we only bait over the breading season. The results speak for themselves, from 6 pairs there are now in excess of 140 pairs and many are taken each year to repopulate other areas. other species like Kaka and robins have also increased significantly.
1080 works, there are things still to be learnt and no one denies this, the application is being continuous refined. There is no question it work and stories about dead birds everywhere simply are not true. The number of dead deer and pigs are low as well contrary to anti 1080 propaganda (and aren't they pests anyway?). Even if we killed every deer we could if we wished reintroduce them tomorrow, you can't do that with a Kiwi. There is a nice study published recently about the effect of 1080 on Sika deer in the Kaimanawas using motion sensitive cameras. Their conclusion (and they did ground study to verify) about 10% of the deer population was killed and at the concentration of deer they encountered (I've forgotten the exact number) this was definitely not a problem.
As others have said no one likes the idea of spreading poison but as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (now ex) Dr Jane Wright said "we are lucky to have it". It's a poison designed to kill manuals and we have no native ground manuals. Around the Kokako we protect with 1080, bats have noticeably increased with them now being often seen at dusk.
Dave Hansford's book is great as he deals with science no wild conjecture. As he says in his book the anti 1080 lobby has yet to put a single piece of peer reviewed science which supports their claims. Theres' is all rhetoric, half truths and outright lies. A lot of what seems to underlie their "case" is some sort of conspiracy theory, and Gaiters hints at this as well. Doc are lying (why) and spreading 1080 is the end in itself, again why?.
Doing nothing certainly will be the end our native birds.
Read the science! Hansford is a good place to start, easy to read and he gives plenty of other sources. The science is so one sided that if you still don't believe after reading it then I suggest you don't want to be convinced.
4
From what I've read the conspiracy theory goes along the lines that goverment based decision-making individuals have invested in the 1080 manufacturing.
I meet a broad spectrum of humanity in my work and the odd person raises the 1080 issue, including statements such as no other country uses it. I remind them that other countries have native mammals they are trying to protect. Nice to read the bats are making a comeback in the kokako country up there.
@Honora, that's the thing that sets me off all the time, statements like "no other country does use 1080." Clearly objectively false, and if you point it out to them it doesn't register. Six other countries use it, and at least Australia does aerial drops too.
It's very hard to get a fact based discussion with the anti-1080 people.
and at least Australia does aerial drops too
Its worse than that. 1080 occurs naturally in south Australia. If our possoms had come from there 1080 would not have worked. People forget that 1080 is in fact a copy of a naturally occurring substance. Same as pyrethrin and pymethrin being essentially the same chemical but one comes from oil the other from daisys and marigolds. Different scale though
I read that there are around 60 species of plants in Australia with significant amounts of 1080 naturally present. I'm so glad that Camilla sinensis only has a little.
... and because Australian native animals have co-evolved with naturally occurring 1080, they have a resistance to the poison (at Aus dosage rates) and are very unlikely to be killed by it (although a short-term effect if enough bait eaten).
That would explain why NZ dosing rates are so much higher than Aus - you are trying to kill possums that have that resistance. Aus target species are foxes, pigs, dogs, cats etc that are very susceptible to 1080.
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| Forum | The campfire |
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| Started by | Gaiters |
| On | 5 October 2018 |
| Replies | 27 |
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