We’ve just seen the DVD “Poisoning Paradise: Ecocide New Zealand”, by the Graf Boys www.thegrafboys.org

1080 pallets are dropped onto New Zealand bush by the Department of Conservation to kill possums, rats, stoats and other mammals who threaten our native birds. 1080 is a rodenticide and insecticide, and you will learn on the Pesticide info network, that it is definitely a nasty chemical with acute toxicity, it is a developmental or reproductive toxin, possibly carcinogenic and a likely hormone disruptor.

The documentary shows how 1080 baits kill birds as well as mammals. Of a horrible death, from some hours to two days of fits and convulsions… It kills insect and invertebrates. It kills fish and crayfish. It kills the animals who eat poisoned animals too. The food chain is polluted and the decomposers work stops. It ends up in native food, in our water, in cow’s milk. It may damage or kill us or our children.

I’ve understood that the 1080 programme was a trial but it keeps going without proper environmental toxicity study. I’ve understood there are monetary interests: Tull Chemical Company in Alabama is making business and the helicopter companies that drop the thing probably too. Well, they could find other ways of making money.

It is not a new issue and many arguments from both sides can be found on the Internet and You Tube. Meanwhile, we still have possums, less and less birds and we still spread poison in NZ nature. We do not have a 1080 problem but a invasive species problem and we should raise the discussion to tackling the problem collectively.

There is enough evidence that it is dangerous so it must stop  as a precautionary measure. There are alternatives which do no harm, mainly ground based bait station, i.e. trapping. I personally add here that possums could be hunted for an income, or  could be gathered and returned to their original habitats where they are so rare, or pieces of bush land could be allocated to people who look after them, which includes controlling the possums. Plenty of other solutions…

Please help stop New Zealand poisoning.

Florence