Another Anti 1080 Supporter Gives Her Reasons Why.

By Sheryn Clothier Editor "TreeCropper" the NZTCA national magazine.

I recently viewed Poisoning Paradise, an anti-1080 documentary by Steve and Clyde Graf. These brothers obviously know and love our bush, and had some superb footage: of stags called up to the camera; of kiwis hunting in daylight; of wekas eating 1080; of koura (fresh water crayfish) fighting over 1080 carrots; of tomtits pecking at full-size 1080 bait; of cattle and dogs and horses slowly dying horrific and cruel deaths; of hundreds of birds, deer, sheep and pig carcasses, not resting in peace, but contorted into an ugly and obviously painful death spasm.

Forest and Bird support 1080, claiming it is a "humane way to kill" and "causes herbivores to die quietly from heart failure". There is absolutely no possible way you could buy that line after seeing this footage. That we can cause uproars over Crafar Farms and SPCA examples of animal cruelty, but condone this at governmental level, over and over again, in our beautiful bush, is incredible.

DOC dismissed the documentary as emotive - they were right, it is.

But even if we could dismiss the humane issues as a necessary evil (and no animal is that evil) - where is the justification?

Asking DOC gets a pre-programmed mantra: "Aerial 1080 drops are the only economical way to control possums, and possums must be controlled because they are a major cause of Tb – which could affect our export markets."

Hunters and trappers say they can achieve a cleaner, greener, more humane, and semi-profitable control by trapping and selling the meat and fur. 1080 proponents say ground control doesn't work, only easily accessible areas are targeted and trappers move on to more profitable areas once a certain level is reached - effectively 'farming' possums.

Anti-1080s disagree; they say ground control can achieve a higher kill rate and,

besides, the land next to stock is easily-accessible. They say bounty systems have worked before, and can work again.

NPCA (National Possum Control Agencies) advises that $80 million is spent each year on possum control. In 10 years we have reduced our estimated possum population from 70 million to a 'best informed estimate' (no one really knows) of 50 million possums.

That's $40 a possum.

That's a lot of taxpayers' money. That's a lot of subsidy for a new industry. That is some bounty.

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Possum processors say their 100-ton Japanese orders of possum meat vanished into thin air when they were unable to guarantee 1080-free product. Maybe it is not just about anti-1080, maybe it is also about wasting tax-payers' money, creating new jobs and supporting a sustainable, environmentally-friendly, clean-green industry that could eventuate in self-sustaining possum control?

Land Care Research themselves admit that "...Tb is not widespread in possums and is often difficult to find. On a broad scale, prevalence of infection is usually less than 2%."

And even at that small level, Anti-1080s ask for the evidence that infected possums actually do re-infect bovines. And ask what is going to happen to our export beef market when it is realised 1080-contaminated cows can, and probably have been, processed into beef? That 1080-contaminated milk is mixed into the national vat?

Studies on the effects of 1080 seem to be amazingly absent. What happens to the eels that eat the poisoned carcasses? The trout that eat the poisoned koura? The hunter's pregnant wife who eats the contaminated pheasant (or pig or deer)? What happens to our invertebrate, bacteria and fungi? What is the long-lasting effect on biodiversity after such a massacre of our bird life? How does it affect humans drinking contaminated water?

Not only are the ramifications not known, the basic recommendations from the 1080 manufacturer are not even followed. We are endangering our very valuable clean green image, stifling a new industry and potential jobs, and poisoning our very precious paradise.

And I can't understand one single real reason why.

I was somewhat anti-1080 before, having heard what it had done to family dogs, and noticing myself its lethal effect on birds, and felt DOC were very heavy-handed and undemocratic whenever approached about it. But as a tree cropper, I have no love for our furry Aussie pests and am the first out with the .22.

But I do have an almost worshipful, protective respect for our endemic bush, and consider the mass genocide of 1080 a pointless, inhumane sacrilege. After watching Poisoning Paradise and researching this editorial, I am now definitely in the anti-1080 camp.