YOU, THE PUBLIC OF NEW ZEALAND, ARE THE ONES WHO ARE PAYING TO HAVE THIS EVIL POISON SPREAD ALL OVER YOUR OWN COUNTRY.

HOW?

By personal, business, direct and indirect taxation by and to the New Zealand Government.

Some of this taxation is channelled into Department of Conservation coffers.

Some of it is channelled into Animal Health Board.

Some of it is channelled into the government “state owned enterprise (SOE); “Animal Control Products LTD”, which re-refines and distributes 1080 to approved NZ users.

Some of it is used to give grants to organisations which promote 1080, land use.

Some of it is used to finance the Medical Officers of Health, who usually place additional conditions onto the resource consents.

By rates levied on home, land and property owners within district and regional council wards.

Up until very recently, Regional Councils were actively building and operating business units as profit centers which competed with private pest control operators for contracts to Department of Conservation and Animal Health Board who both promote 1080 use. More recently, AHB has announced it’s intention to manage it’s own pest control contracts, rather than sub contract Regional Councils to manage these contracts for them. Some Regional Councils are attempting to justify and maintain pest control in-house businesses with operating budgets in the millions of dollars; all financed from ratepayers compulsory contributions or levies. This is in direct competition with legitimate private operators who offer alternatives to the use of 1080.

Take a guess who issues the necessary Resource Consents governing 1080 use. The same Regional Councils.

By levies by the Animal Health Board on farmers.

These levies allow the Incorporated Society, AHB which was planned by the NZ government, to finance their mandate of combating bovine TB. Bovine TB was not endemic in New Zealand prior to the introduction of cattle, and the main reason for the spread of TB has always been movement of diseased cattle from place to place. The unfortunate present day consequence of this is the widespread application of aerial 1080 over vast areas of New Zealand on a regular, ongoing and repetitive basis. The bovine Tb problem is not being eliminated by this method. The infrastructure of the AHB is however, being perpetuated.

How much is being spent on “pest control “per year?  Actually, around $100 million.

Who or what, is administering this massive spending of public money?

The principle administrators are the Regional Councils because they issue the resource consents, and in some cases are also directly involved in the operations as well. Surely a conflict of interest? SOME OF THE RESOURCE CONSENTS ISSUED BY REGIONAL COUNCILS FOR AERIAL APPLICATION OF 1080 ONTO LANDS AND WATERWAYS ARE FOR PERIODS OF TEN YEARS.

Then there is the HSNO Act, the MOH, OSH, Police and the operators themselves. Let’s expand on these.

HSNO Act (Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act) conditions are reviewed and published for ratification by Parliament by ERMANZ (Environmental Risk Management Authority New Zealand)This Act defines such things as how 1080 may be stored, packaged, transported, applied and used. It appears that while ERMANZ may accept complaints about 1080 and the way it is used from any person or entity, it does not police or enforce the Act. ERMANZ does not overtly assist complainants to have redress for their complaints in terms of enforcement and seems either unwilling or unable to take on this role which leaves complainants with a difficult and complex problem.

MOH (Medical Officers of Health) are part of the Ministry of Health, Department of Health and District Health Boards. These officials are often very difficult to track down and make contact with. Any 1080 operation is subject to a sub-set of conditions defined by the local or regional MOH. The release by the MOH of their conditions for a drop of 1080 is commonly denied to and withheld from the public so the public has no opportunity to question the conditions; even to the extent where concerned public enquirers have been told by the MOH that to obtain the conditions they would have to apply under the Official Information Act (OIA) and that this may take at least 20 working days. WHAT THIS MEANS IN REAL LIFE, IS THAT THE CONDITIONS ARE NOT RELEASED UNTIL AFTER THE POISON DROP HAS TAKEN PLACE.

OSH (Department of Occupational Safety and Health) are responsible for safe worker practices in the workplace and enforce regulations pertaining to work methods, protective clothing, avoidance of workplace hazards and related issues. There have been instances of workers involved with application of 1080 being seriously affected and there are filmed and documented incidents which are clearly in breach of the OSH and HSNO regulations, yet OSH is seldom present and usually gives prior warning of it’s intent to visit an operation or a workplace. OSH seems reluctant to follow up and enforce reported unsafe practices.

NZ Police are required in law to be notified (by the operators) within a day of any incident involving 1080 application where an incident may cause public or other risk (e.g. to farm stock). In our experience, the police are seldom informed by the 1080 operators of such incidents. One very serious incident near Turangi was not reported to police in a timely way and since that time months passed before police would make any decisions regarding prosecutions. On the other hand, police have been very quick to come to the call of 1080 operators if they feel threatened by 1080 protester presence or activity.

Even worse, it is common knowledge that when farmers have lost stock to botched boundary overfly's of aerial 1080, that they are paid compensation by the operators but usually on written confirmation that they will not disclose the incident and the compensation. (Non disclosure agreement)

1080 Operators. It would be unfair to place all 1080 applicator contractors into a single category of “all bad all the time”; however it has to be realised that the companies involved are in the game to make money and shortcuts are taken and breaches of regulations do occur at their hands. Our concern is that many of these go either unreported to the relevant authorities or ignored or are overlooked, so they reoccur.

Last but by no means least are the two principle advocates and financiers of 1080 operations, the NZ Department of Conservation (a NZ government department) and The Animal Health Board (an Incorporated Society which devolved from the the old Agricultural pest control organisation run by the Ministry of Agriculture of the NZ Government) These two organisations devote a large amount of time and energy promoting their view of the benefits of 1080 on the environment and on the protection of NZ agricultural exports. We believe that neither of these organisations have an serious interest in exposing the negative aspects of their 1080 use and  have dedicated insufficient funding to assessing and publicising the negative effects. As an example DoC has made significant PR efforts to persuade the NZ public that it is doing great things to preserve the Kiwi, while it has made little or no mention until forced by anti 1080 observers that it and it’s combined operations with AHB have killed massive numbers of Weka, Kea, Tomtit and Robins as well as other birds, deer, pigs and other recreational hunting animals. Recently there is emerging data proving DoC aerial poisoning operations have killed high numbers of Kiwi and other protected species.

(Below is a rather succinct comment from a concerned associate of ESPC:

“On Little Barrier Island, DoC did a post poison operation search and found: 1 blackbird and 1 Pukeko.

On this basis DoC announced that, as predicted, there were no significant bird losses.

Shortly after, a grid search for invasive weeds over a small portion of the island found: 14 Morepork, 2 Kakariki, 2 North Island Brown KIWI, a Harrier hawk, plus more dead blackbirds and Pukeko. No small birds seemed to be in this count, by which one suspects their remains were lost in the leaf litter.

From this we may assume DoC will not seriously and systematically search for what it does not want to find.”

In summary, is is apparent that the public of New Zealand are being forced to pay for widespread application of a non selective deadly poison over their lands and waterways by and through entities which operate in a bureaucratic miasma of regulations which are ineffectively policed, enforced or credible. Almost all of these entities have in one way or another avoided being open and co-operative toward public complaints. Typically the public is given the bureaucratic “run around”. At a later time examples of these will be detailed on the NZ Wildlands Biodiversity Management Society Incorporated website.