New Zealand is a small country with a small population of under 5 million. While freedom of expression is the personal right of every New Zealander it does not necessarily apply to employees or contractors where they are obliged to adhere to employer policies if speaking on the employers behalf.  Many people are bound by confidentiality clauses in their contracts. The employment opportunities for scientists are limited in that the main institutions engaged in utilizing environmental science are funded by government. Two scenario’s emerge from this. One is that science outcomes are often geared to the policy or political desires of the employer (often government), or consultant scientists are contracted to produce a specific outcome. Because alternative private industry opportunities for a scientist are limited, employed or contracted people who dare to become “whistle blowers” are aware such action may be carer threatening.

The article below was produced by two independent highly qualified scientists and released to the media. It gives a comprehensive insight into the way Department of Conservation Science may be brought into question and why.

Science, 1080 and the Department of Conservation?

In 1969 on the basis of large clinical studies that compared the past with current practice, it was know to the medical community that the correct treatment of an uncommon red blood cell cancer (polycythemia rubra vera) should be either chlorambucil (a chemotherapeutic agent) or radioactive phosphorous-32.  The studies, which involved thousands of patients, were done by respected academics, but the controls were historical and some of the data had been collected in retrospect.  The medical literature was filled with accounts of the spectacular benefits of both chlorambucil and phosphorus-32, so the only question seemed to be which of chlorambucil and phosphorous-32 was better.  Thus, a randomized, double-blind, multi-center clinical trial was designed to settle the question.  This is the only type of study that can definitively answer such a question.  Almost as an after thought, the researchers included a placebo group (i.e., one that received no treatment other than the removal of red cells).  By 1976, the results were in.  Patients in the placebo group lived longer, much to the astonishment of previously fervent believers in chlorambucil and phosphorous-32.  The reason was that the chlorambucil and phosphorous-32 treated patients had an unanticipated consequence: a very high rate of leukemia (another kind of blood cancer). The medical literature is replete with examples, such as this one, of conclusions drawn on the basis of seat-of-pants observations and poorly designed studies that were subsequently shown to be false when careful studies were eventually done.

In 1970, the overall cure rate for childhood leukemia (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) was about 5%.  By 1995, the cure rate had risen to about 85% overall and to more than 95% in some subgroups of children.  How was this miracle accomplished?  Was there a spectacular break-through in treatment?  Did someone win a Nobel Prize?  Was there an overlooked Jonas Salk?  The answer is no.  This therapeutic miracle was accomplished through thirty years of careful randomized double-blind clinical trials, each building on the reliable knowledge of its predecessors.  There was no break-through, just hundreds of dedicated doctors incrementally using a methodology to establish truth that was so effective and reliable that following studies could use the results as a basis from which to launch the next incremental step on the road from 5% to 85% survival. 

Originally, developed mostly by R A Fisher in the 1920’s to support agricultural research, the discovery and application of randomized experiments as the means to clinical truth is perhaps the most important single medical development in the last eighty years, first because it is applicable to almost all clinical questions and second because it means that clinical knowledge is no longer dependent on anecdote, opinion, and individual experience, and can no longer be held captive to prejudice of well meaning advocates or of self-interested profiteers, such as drug companies and device manufacturers.  However, the randomized study methodology is not just applicable to healthcare.  It is a prescription for reliable science, a universal antidote to prejudice and bias, and the only way to prove causal relationships in complex statistical investigations. 

For at least 25 years, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DoC) has been mass poisoning substantial portions of the New Zealand ecosystems with aerial drops of a poison called 1080 (actually a compound, sodium monofluoroacetate).  The rational for this extraordinary behaviour is that it is necessary to control rats and possums.  As incredible as it may sound, for over 30 years our Department of Conservation has been routinely dropping from the air into our fragile forest ecosystems tons of a poison capable of killing every oxygen-consuming creature in New Zealand, a poison with characteristics similar to cyanide, a poison that the United Nations WHO classifies as “extremely hazardous, 1A”.  Despite the self-apparent a priori concern that such a practice should naturally generate, there is not one well-designed, controlled study addressing the ecosystem-level benefit, harm, or the inevitable unintended side effects of this practice.  There is certainly no randomized, blinded and controlled study.  If healthcare used DoC’s standards of evidence, we would still be bleeding patients as a cure for pneumonia, and we would certainly still be killing patients having polycythemia with chlorambucil and phosphorous-32.

Unprecedented practice.

One might ask:  where is the precedent?  Are there countries or places that are doing something similar to dropping tonnes of a universal poison wholesale into ecosystems?   To my knowledge, there are none (unless one accepts the United States’ use of dioxin in Vietnam as a valid precedent which most of us would not). New Zealand uses 8,100 kg/year of monofluoroacetate. The Canadian Wildlife Service allows the province of British Colombia to use only 2 kg per year for an area over three times that of New Zealand, and then only in ground traps 2.  Australia has used aerial baiting on a very limited basis in extremely remote areas to control feral dogs, pigs and foxes, but no other place in the world, not a single one, has the hubris or irresponsibility to routinely drop monofluoroacetate bait, or any other broad spectrum poison, into a semi-tropical forest within a few kilometers of populated areas.  Australia’s total use of monofluoroacetate is about 200 kg, or 2% based on the Customs Department’s records of New Zealand’s use in a country 30 times New Zealand’s size.   New Zealand’s density of use is 1,525 times that of Australia, which, for practical purposes, is the only other country using monofluoroacetate.   Thus, we in New Zealand stand entirely alone in our use of monofluoroacetate.  Besides endangering New Zealand’s “clean-green” image abroad, it is hardly consonant with our self image of an environmentally conscious people.

DoC claims that New Zealand is in a unique ecological position and that is why we are alone in the world in our use of aerial monofluoroacetate.  But this is simply not true.  Many Pacific Islands have unique, predominantly avian fauna.  Most have extremely rugged terrain.  Most have native species that are threatened by feral species.  The State of Hawaii in the USA for example, has a very similar situation on the Big Island of Hawaii, and yet the State of Hawaii would no more consider mass aerial poisoning with monofluoroacetate than they would with cyanide 3 or strychnine.

The fundamental question of benefit-to-risk ratio

The significant issue is whether the benefits of monofluoroacetate aerial drops out-weigh their costs and adverse consequences both known and unknown.  The burden of proof must fall on DoC and the other advocates of this practice that inherently, fundamentally and intrinsically violates the most basic principles of ecosystem management.  Yet, as noted above, there is not one scientifically sound paper establishing either the ecosystem benefit or the extent of almost certain ecosystem harm.  Of course, there is no shortage of bland anecdotes such as the statement by DoC’s John Gaukrodger recently: the Pureora Forest “has greater diversity of bird species and population densities than almost any other area in New Zealand”, and the one of Douglas Wright, xxxx, “the use of monofluoroacetate has had many positive effects.”  In recent months DoC, trying to deflect growing public criticism of its use of 1080, has filled the newspapers with assertions of this type averring the benignity and benefits of aerial 1080.

However, these statements are unsupported by scientifically credible evidence, prospectively collected data, statistical analyses, and most important, simultaneous, randomized, not-poisoned control ecosystems?  (Scientists have a saying, “If you wish to know a researcher’s prejudices, read the results of his last uncontrolled study”.)   It does not matter what DoC thinks, what the Minister of Conservation thinks, or what we think.  What matters is what the scientific evidence shows.   In DoC’s centerpiece document promoting the use of aerial monofluoroacetate, there are no referenced studies showing overall benefit or assessing collateral damage.  Dropping food laced with 1080 indiscriminately onto thousands of hectares of fragile forest is an ecosystem-level intervention, and so will be the consequences.   The only paper that even raises ecosystem-scale issues proposed a framework for studying the issue.  It is rational, well reasoned and apparently entirely ignored by DoC and other major government users.  It states, “Most attempts to quantify impacts on non-target species are very simplistic and short-term” and aerial drops should be “regarded as experiments”, which they definitely are not.  Indeed to the contrary, aerial monofluoroacetate “operations” have become a religion in the DoC bureaucracy, and seemingly also in the New Zealand establishment in general. 

In a few cases, the species-specific effects have been studied.  However, even those studies often have equivocal or contradictory results, some lack simultaneous controls, most are short term, most lack statistical significance tests and none are done with randomized blinded controls.  In addition, virtually all of these studies are done by or sponsored by DoC, the advocating agency, which is like asking the Coal Producers Association whether burning coal may cause global warming.

A 1998 study is about as good as these single species investigations get.  It reported that after monofluoroacetate “treatment”, robin (a threatened species) and tomtit populations suffered 55% and 100% losses respectively.  There were no P-values or confidence intervals presented on the relative population losses.  In subsequent years the kill rate for robins were reported as lower, although statistical tests of significance again were not done.  The earlier robin and tomtit slaughter was hardly mentioned in follow-up reports.  In the subsequent two year program, tomtits were dropped from the study and not mentioned at all.  As bad as all this is, the critical point here is even worse.  DoC’s own study, one of the few, suggests that the monofluoroacetate “treatments” executed over at least a preceding decade were almost certainly mass-killing robins and tomtits, and DoC did not know it.  One can only stare in wonderment at the elasticity of the bureaucratic mind that would allow an organization that claims to be representing environmental conservation to continue fundamentally the same practice that now had been shown to have been mass killing critical native species for the previous decades.  DoC did not know the damage they were causing, just as they do not now for many other species. 

The effect of monofluoroacetate on invertebrates (including insects and spiders) was studied in 1994 .  The study showed highly statistically significant devastation (over 50%) in aerial 1080 “treated” areas of virtually all insect species studied as opposed to control areas.  This study is of particular interest because despite the fact that it was at least as well designed as most DoC studies and despite the fact that it passed internal peer review in the Landcare Research Institute, DoC tried to suppress it, and did succeed in suppressing formal publication.   This happen just as DoC had received $50,000,000 in funding that was earmarked for immediate possum control which DoC mostly carried out with aerial 1080 drops. The study had a control area that received no poison and an aerial drop area.    Two weeks after the drop the mean number of invertebrates in the poisoned area was 1/3 that in the control area and one month afterwards, ¼ of the mean number of individual invertebrates were present in the poisoned area compared to that of the control area.  One year later, the seasonal abundance of all insect larval species, springtails and spiders in comparable non-poisoned forests showed their expected rise in summer whereas the poisoned forest abundance remained significantly depressed and level following the poisoning The study of weta, (huge insect unevolved for  over 100 million years and totally unique to New Zealand) to determine their susceptibility to cereal 1080 bait found that 50% of weta died and the remainder suffered sub-lethal effects resulting in behavioral changes (they became active in daylight hours).  This paper was also never published by DoC or the government, and despite being cited in hundreds of other scientific papers since, DoC has not seen fit to repeat it.  Under such circumstances, it is difficult to resist the sarcasm of one wag who commented upon reading this, “Of course not, why fund a second study that you will just have to suppress?”  The effect of 1080 on arthropods should come as no surprise to DoC given that it was originally developed in the 1920’s as an insecticide.

What about the other hundreds or thousands of species that have never been studied at all.  How are they doing?  We don’t know.  Arthropods (bugs) are killed in large numbers.  We were mass killing robins and tomtits for better than a decade and a half and we did not know it.  What about the long term effects on Ruru (Morepork, the charming New Zealand owl), which are known to be vulnerable to secondary poisoning?  I can find no studies going beyond two years and even those d not show unequivocal lack of harm.  It is possible, for example, that the rare frog, Leiopelma archeyi, is being driven to extinction not by unknown agents, but rather by DoC’s ongoing use of monofluoroacetate.  Perhaps not, but we don’t know.

Interestingly, one of the few points regarding monofluoroacetate on which DoC is probably on a firm basis is that contrary to the views of most monofluoroacetate opponents, the risk to humans from aerial monofluoroacetate is minute, assuming there are no accidents or errors, i.e., the risk to humans really comes down to the risk of an accidental drop onto the wrong spot.  Unfortunately, DoC’s operations are far from perfect.  For example, in September 2005, DoC inadvertently dropped monofluoroacetate pellets on land being actively grazed by Ross Gardner in the Kauaeranga valley.  There are numerous similar examples, but since DoC is very careful to keep such episodes from public view, the reports are anecdotal and error rates are simply not public known.  As one officer in the Canadian Wildlife Service commented to me when I explained what DoC has been doing, “Well, sooner or later they are going to end up with a bunch of dead kids.  There is no antidote, you know.”

Even if we take the univariate view of DoC and look at the possum, the one species most often cited as the reason for aerial monofluoroacetate, the evidence is not ideal.  Take, for example the best designed study that I have been able to find, a 2005 DoC-funded and executed study purporting to show the benefit of aerial monofluoroacetate in preventing loss of a single tree species of plant, Fuchsia excorticate.  Among other things the study claims about a 20% improvement in stem loss comparing monofluoroacetate-poisoned areas to a control area.  A cursory review of the published manuscript turned up the following ten methodological defects.

•There was only one untreated area.  (Thus, valid statistical conclusions are not possible.)

•P-values were not calculated for overall change in any of the three outcome variables.

•Control and treated areas were not randomly selected.

•The control plot initially had a very different stem size distribution than any of the study areas.

•There was no ground-baited control.

•The control area results are dominated by a single plot that did extremely poorly.  If that plot (1of 9) were eliminated most of the observed differences would disappear.

•The researchers admit that the “foliar cover” outcome variable is prone to error and subjective, assessments were not done by a consistent group of people, and the assessors were not blind as to plot status.  (A subjective outcome variable without assessor blinding is more or less a guarantee for biased results.)

•In fact, for none of the outcome variables were the assessors blind as to plot status.

•The unit of analysis was incorrect.  It should have been areas of coverage, not trees or stems.

•The study was funded by DoC, a clear advocate.

With study methodology like this, one guarantees that the results will reflect the biases of the researchers, which are readily apparent from reading the paper itself.  Any one of these flaws could account for the observed differences, but taken as a whole one can hardly consider the case of benefit even for the single species, Fuchsia, as proven.  Yet this study is among the best that I have been able to find. We are not suggesting that possums do not damage Fuchsia. They may indeed.  Of course possums eat vegetation (they are omnivores), but the extent of their impact on the forest even with regard to this one species remains in doubt, and this study gives us no idea of the effect on the whole ecosystem or of the extent of collateral damage to other native species that may have occurred.

Goals and objectives

Even though the practice of mass ecosystem poisoning with monofluoroacetate is highly problematic with regard to its effects on native species and New Zealand’s forest environments in general, the rationalization behind it is even more so.  At the core are DoC’s management “strategy” and its imperious approach to implementing it.  It involves extraordinarily heavy-handed attempts at manipulating fragile ecosystems in violation of the most fundamental principles of ecosystem management, misrepresentation of facts (a DoC area manager, Pim de Monchy, once told me that “1080 is specific to mammals” even though it kill almost everything), , enormous budgetary implications, coercion and threats to land owners who question DoC policy or refuse to cooperate with some of their not so well considered plans, and the development of a massively expensive captive industry that carries out DoC’s trapping and killing schemes.  Most culpable however is a subjective, arbitrary and frivolous definition of what constitutes a “pest” (a “pest” to DoC is like a “terrorist” to George Bush, a label to justify pursuing its own aims). To adequately document the full spectrum of DoC’s unscientific foolishness and apparent waste money is beyond the scope of this article, so we will just enumerate a few anecdotes based on our experience as landowners in Port Charles, which is a little bit of paradise that sits at the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula.

Pigs, deer and goats are not pests to many who consider them an important source of recreation and food.  A few months ago DoC and Environment Waikato (EW) declared the goat to be public enemy number one, claiming that they inhibit forest regeneration.  At one point we were told as landowners that we would have to leave our home for a couple of days to allow DoC hunters and dog to come onto our land to kill goats.  If we did not comply, we were told, DoC would charge us with a violation the Biosecurity act, force us to pay for their hunters and we would have to pay court costs.  As it turns out DoC did not have the authority to make such a threat, but that did not prevent them from doing it.  We can assure you that it is more than a little frightening to be threatened by a government department with all its financial resources at its back.  Many of the neighboring landowners were intimidated by the threat and simply caved in.  Some were bribed into compliance with promises to pay for fences.  Two farm owners, Marcus and Anne Ward, agreed after negotiation to permit DoC’s contractors to hunt the goats on their land in exchange for DoC’s agreement to discontinue distributing monofluoroacetate poisoning near their farm.   The Wards, who are remarkably environmentally conscientious third-generation farmers, had previously used the goats to control gorse (a feral weed imported from Scotland) and had mustered and sold them as a source of income.  Now the Wards must purchase and spray more herbicides to control the gorse, but are no longer faced the monofluoroacetate in their watershed.  It was the best deal they could get, but is a strange circumstance indeed in which environmentalist farmers must bribe the Department of “Conservation” to desist from poisoning their watershed.

In the end, DoC and EW spent over $600,000 “eradicating” goats in our area, despite the certainty of reinhabitation by domestic goats and exogenous ingress, despite the fact that numbers were well controlled by mustering and hunting, and despite the fact that there was no credible evidence that goats in the numbers we had them were having an important effect on forest regeneration.  We have carefully monitored the effects of goats for years on our land and found little or no damage to the bush, portions of which regenerated spectacularly in the presence of goats.  Yet DoC paid the outrageous price of $600 dollars per goat to kill them.  Granted this is not much to DoC with seemingly limitless public monies to spend on marginal projects, but to hard-working farmers making a living from the land, it is quite a lot.  Though not entirely to the point, I can assure you that it was emotionally wrenching to watch these defenseless animals being mass slaughtered for no sensible reason and their carcasses left to rot.

DoC says feral cats are a “pest”, even though feral cats have been a top predator (excluding humans) in the Port Charles basin essential to ecosystem balance for over 120 years.  They control possums, rats, mice and to some degree mustelids.  Yet DoC, supported by the Moehau Environment Group (MEG), a paid DoC surrogate that poses as a community-based organization, with its usual ecosystem consciousness, four years ago began trapping feral cats in the Port Charles area to support DoC’s genetically pure Pateke introduction program (a highly dubious enterprise in any case, since Pateke interbreed freely with mallards, a common species here).  The results were predictable and obvious: massive explosion in rabbit, mice, rat populations, and possibly mustelid and possum populations as well.  In addition, there is the distinct possibility of consequent “collateral” damage to native species.  At one point the rabbit population was so disruptive that a neighbor of ours threatened Environment Waikato that, if it did not control the rabbit/rat problem that it had created, he would release cats and weasels himself into the environment.  EW sent a team the next week to intensively poison rabbits at public expense on his property.

Predictably, the cats quickly became trap-shy and the prey species populations reverted to normal levels.  We are left with a healthy population of very smart cats, a traumatized ecosystem and ongoing payments to MEG principals to trap feral cats. 

Another example is the crusade against stoats in Port Charles.  For the last five years, DoC and paid contractors to trap stoats in the Moehau/Port Charles area.  Stoats are considered to be critical to the decline of Kiwi populations.  It is also know that rats can prey on Kiwis.  It is also know that stoats are major predators of rats.  DoC believes that controlling stoat populations increases the survival of Kiwi chicks.  Again a properly controlled study has never been done to show this.  It would certainly change the shape of things if it had been, but it has not despite spending tens of millions on stoat control.  So the “reasoning” goes like this: first we trap stoats (even though they quickly become trap shy), this, if successful in the short run, results in increased rat populations, which eat Kiwi chicks and eggs.  This requires monofluoroacetate both aerial and ground, which kills indiscriminately anything that gets the bait including both know and unknown native species, some of which are endangered. 

The one thing we have not done is proved that the net effect of this circuitous plan on Kiwis is positive, much less on the hundreds of other native species.  In the Moehau catchments there have been no efforts to credibly determine whether the Kiwi population is being helped by all this effort, environmental risk and expense, and the other three thousand or so native species are entirely ignored.  Millions are being and have been spent on this reasoning.  The only clear beneficiaries are the trapping and poisoning contractors and of course the DoC bureaucracy itself.  (Incidentally so far as the Kiwis are concerned the whole multi-million dollar scheme could be made unnecessary by simply breeding a few Kiwis in captivity and releasing them into the wild when they have reached the critical weight of 900 grams and are beyond the reach of most predators.)

Looking for consistency in DoC behavior one might hypothesize that all feral species are to be considered “pests”.  This at least would be consistent with DoC’s often proffered “ecological restoration” goal, which in itself is wholly unobtainable at any cost in inhabited areas.    However, there are dozens, or even hundreds, of feral species that seriously compete with or kill natives that are not on the DoC hit list, e.g., mynas, sparrows, starlings, magpies, pheasants, the Australasian harrier, etc.  Why are we not carrying out a compulsive, expensive, emotionally driven, and environmentally risky efforts to “get rid” of myna birds or pheasants?  They undoubtedly compete with and therefore limit the native populations.  The ring-necked pheasant occupies a niche almost identical to the pukeko and weka.  Efforts by local Port Charles farmers here to reintroduce the Weka have failed, probably because of competition from pheasants.  Yet pheasants are tolerated. The beautiful and charming rosella is on the DoC hit list as equally arbitrarily as pheasants are not, and yet the New Zealand public must pay for the coming witch hunt on rosellas.

Let us make clear what we are not saying.  We are not impugning the motives or efforts of the hundreds of concerned environmentalists or environmentalist organizations that work with DoC to protect native species and our magnificent native forests.  Indeed, we applaud them and are a part of these activities ourselves.  Nor are we suggesting that many of the efforts of DoC are without merit, in particular the hut maintenance and trail maintenance efforts.

What we are questioning are the DoC practices that seem to rise out of bureaucratic intransigence, hubris, and manipulative condescension, out of a failure to heed the bed-rock legally-mandated management principle that there is no such thing as an ecosystem intervention without unanticipated consequences, but most importantly out of a failure to establish with scientific certainty the sense and ecosystem benefit of risky practices that are ab initio as dubious as mass aerial monofluoroacetate poisoning. 

Though it may not seem so at first glance, scientific soundness is every person’s concern.  Marginal studies do not find half of the truth.  They finds only the bias of the researcher or his sponsor and represents it as the truth.  Scientific truth has a high price.  The price is discipline, rigor, time, money, bureaucratic prerogative and often the highest price of all, the sacrifice of prejudice.  There is no other reliable way to the truth about the behavior of complex systems. There is no other way the life of our common child, the wonderful unique New Zealand forest ecosystems.  Our methological techniques must match the discipline and rigor of those that cured childhood.

Quinn Whiting-Okeefe, MD, MA

Retired Professor of Medicine and Medical Information Science,

University of California, San Francisco, Life Sciences Campus

Pat Whiting-Okeefe, PhD

Technical advisor Upper Coromandel Landcare Association.

Environmental Risk Management Authority NZ: Building Partnerships for Pesticides Risk reduction:  a symposium for future action. 2004:1-3.  Obtained under an OIA request from the Department of Customs.

Elliot, John. Canadian Wildlife Services: Personal communication. July 2005.

Sodium and potassium cyanide are poisons with characteristics very similar to monofluoroacetate in that they are universal, fast, and do not persist long in the environment once wet.  However, cyanide has advantages over monofluoroacetate.  Secondary poisoning is almost impossible and there is an antidote.  One suspects that the DoC drops monofluoroacetate rather than cyanide because the public objections to mass poisoning with cyanide would be overwhelming.

Hauraki Herald 9 June 2006.

Innes, J, Barker, G.  New Zealand Journal of Ecology (1999) 23(2): 111-127

Powlesland R,  Knegtmans J, Marshall I.  Evaluating the impacts of 1080 possum control operations on North Island robins, North Island tomtits and moreporks at Pureora – preliminary results. Science for Conservation 1998; 74:1-22.

Meads, MJ.  Effect of sodium monofluoroacetate (1080) on non target invertebrates of Whitecliffs conservation Area, Taranaki.  Landcare Research Contract Report LC9394/126 1994 September.

Hutcheson, J. Imapct of 1080 on Weta Populations.  Forest Research Institute. Unpublished 1989.

Urlich SC, Brady PJ. Benefits of aerial 1080 possum control to tree fuchsia in the Tararua Range, Wellington. New Zealand J of Ecology 2005; 29(2):299-309.

Whiting-O'Keefe, Simborg DW, and Henke C.  Choosing the correct unit of analysis in medical care experiments.  Medical Care. 1984; 22:1101-14

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“AND COMMON SENSE”.

Why BAIT STATION DISPENSING OF 1080, IS NOT SATISFACTORY

Problems, outcomes and alternative solutions.

The dispensing of 1080 pellets from the common type of bait station {Philproof} is fraught with danger.

These bait stations are commonly used in conjunction with major operations where 1080 is dropped by helicopter over vast areas. Major stream margins [little streams don't count] tracks, and farm boundary's are treated with an array of bait stations as a buffer to avoid the risk of the helicopter overruns. Gross errors of navigation sometimes result in treatment of non intended areas.

Sad to say, though this is embarrassing, helicopter overruns are still quite common, both by accident and by navigational errors despite the use of GPS [note the chopped carrots floating on Lake Taupo this last winter].

  The Philproof is a damned awkward bait station to load and even more difficult device to remove 1080 pellets from when the drop is finished. There is often spillage into the long grass and on to the forest floor as it is hard to remove the dust and broken pellets without doing so. Often this task is carried out by tired and disinterested young men, often in the rain, who just want to get off the hill as fast as they can.

VERY SOON AFTER THE REMOVAL OF THE BAIT STATIONS THE FOREST CAN BE OFFICIALLY AND TECHNICALLY, UNDER RMA Consent CONDITIONS,  DECLARED CLEAN OF 1080 AND YET MANY OF THE BAIT STATIONS REMAIN IN POSITION AND STILL DO CONTAIN 1080.

  AN EXAMPLE.

As contractors working on post poison monitoring for D.O.C., we entered the Whanganui forest and worked the forest near the famous Matemateonga walkway. We were aware that local Maori from Pipiriki had secured the contract to place bait stations along the walkway, but by this date the poison job was believed to have run its course and the area was thought to be safe.

Now someone had made the mistake of paying these boys without checking to see if the second part of the contract had been carried out. [the removal of the bait stations and the destruction of the remaining 1080].

It hadn't been done and as a consequence we were greeted by the sight of bait stations every 50 meters along a popular walkway. Each was still full to overflowing with 1080. Large heaps of 1080 lay on the track where the stations were filled. Green stained bags lay where they had been emptied and sacks of 1080 remained stored under the two huts where the rats had got to them.

Both Otaraheke and Humphries huts you would have to say were badly contaminated and the water tank at Humphries was full of dead rats. Their green dyed, 1080 filled bellies, leaching poison into the water supply. This event is well documented and witnessed by at least three DOC officers.

  TO BE ENTIRELY SAFE YOU WOULD HAVE TO BUILD A BAIT STATION THAT EXCLUDES ANIMALS ALTOGETHER. RATHER A POINTLESS PROJECT BUT MUCH SAFER.

Most employees involved in these 1080 operation have developed the alarming habit of fixing a bait station to the foundations of the local huts in the belief that they do clear the hut of rats.[They sure do ] but in the two or three days that it takes the rat to die it empties the bait station and stores the 1080 pellets in every nook and cranny of the hut.

IT IS PARTICULARLY ALARMING WHEN BRUSHING SPIDER WEBS FROM THE HUT ROOF TO TOUCH THE BUILDING PAPER LINING THE INSIDE OF THE ROOF AND BE GREETED BY A CASCADE OF PELLETS OR GREEN DUST.         

  ALTERNATIVELY PRISE THE LINING FROM ANY HUT WALL THAT IS SITUATED NEAR A 1080 DROP AND YOU WILL FIND POISON STORED WHEREVER A RAT THINKS IS A GOOD DRY PLACE.

This poison stored here by rats in near perfect conditions may go on killing for many years. Also the dried rat carcasses that are also found in the roof and behind the lining of the hut walls are likely to remain lethal for many years.{there is evidence of dried carcasses such as these killing dogs seven years later}

  As you may have witnessed in your own garden Brother Opossum also likes to carry his food away with him.  If you follow a possum run or pad you will often find the remains of peaches and plums turnips and many other foods quite a distance {say a kilometer} from where they were grown. Bait stations on farm perimeters are being emptied by possums and the baits dropped onto the pastures, perhaps not in large enough amounts to kill a cattle beast, but in large enough doses that are detectable if the meat was ever tested for 1080 residue.

  REMEMBER THAT NEW ZEALAND USES 90% OF THE WORLDS SUPPLY OF 1080, SO THE REST OF THE WORLD HAS PRETTY WELL MADE UP ITS MIND WHAT THEY THINK OF IT. DO YOU REALLY THINK THEY WILL GIVE US A SECOND CHANCE. (Can you imagine the fuss when a Frenchman finds TEN EIGHTY on his toast.)

I expect the odd sheep expires or carry sub lethal doses of 1080 under the same circumstances but is scarcely ever noticed, there are always old sheep expiring on the bush edge. Many of the larger Dry stock Stations have poor or no boundary fences so animals pass freely between poisoned area and their home pasture.

CATTLE WILL PLAY WITH, LICK, KNOCK, BUMP WITH THEIR HEADS A BAIT STATION UNTIL IT SPILLS ITS CONTENTS ONTO THE GROUND.  

      

Conclusion ...The use of bait stations may carry less risk than the dropping of 1080 by helicopter but it is in its still fraught with danger and contributes significantly towards 1080 entering the food chain.

The careless use of Philproof  bait stations is allowing 1080 to remain active over a much longer time spans than the bait that falls on the forest floor, so when D.O.C declares the forest safe it very seldom is.  

     Other types of bait stations are available and can be used and located in a sensible and safe managed system

I would recommend a ban of all slow acting poisons such as 1080 and brodifacoum from being dispensed from bait stations.

   

  The Ferratox system that dispenses single doses of cyanide poison in a glass capsule is a winner. When an animal bites the glass capsule the effects are instantaneous and death follows quickly; not the slow lingering death over a 24 hour period that is inflicted upon  possums, deer, pigs and many others with the use of 1080 and brodifacoum.

  REMEMBER ...THOSE OF YOU WHO USE OUR FORESTS. THE HUTS ARE LOADED AND WILL REMAIN SO FOR MANY. YEARS.

          REMEMBER ...THE BAD SHIP SODIUM MONOFLUOROACETATE IS SINKING, AND FOR THOSE THAT ARE STILL PREPARED TO HANG THEIR REPUTATIONS ON HER; THEY WILL GO DOWN WITH THE SHIP.                                                                                    

By Graeme Sturgeon

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