Entrenched Thinking on 1080 use.

1080 use a cash cow for DoC management.

There are better methods of control than 1080.

At an Otago Regional Council compliance committee meeting about rabbits, Cr Duncan Butcher was quoted (ODT 30.1.10) as saying, "If we lose 1080, we're shot."
I believe this is the type of entrenched thinking typical of people who are unable to think outside the square.

Unfortunately, these people are usually to be found in the higher echelons of the various pest-control authorities such as regional councils, the Department of Conservation (Doc) and the Animal Health Board (AHB).

These people make the decisions and issue the orders.

Few of them have any hands-on experience of the animal they are targeting, whether it be any of the larger ungulates, possums or rabbits.

We now have a century of combating different pests in different terrain with various control methods which have been supplanted through the years with new techniques and products.

Every time a new weapon comes along, it is seized on with desperation by authorities as the ultimate solution.

The toxin sodium fluoroacetate, or 1080 as it is more commonly known, is the latest of these miracle cures.

It kills literally everything with which it comes into contact.

It is a great toxin if distributed accurately and sparingly by hand.

But, bolstered by the bureaucratic mindset, it has become the poison of choice to be air-dropped in ever increasing tonnages.

As far as Doc, the AHB and the regional councils are concerned, 1080 is a cheap and efficient option for dropping large tonnages over all types of terrain.

For them it is largely a matter of economics and the appearance of a job being done.

As with all poisons and even viruses such as RHD, animals in time either get poison-shy or build up a natural immunity.

But the major minus-factor in 1080 drop operations is in the lack of follow-up.

Whatever the total kill percentage may be (and 95% is usually claimed for aerial 1080), a period of three or four years usually elapses, allowing animal numbers to recover, and the cycle is resumed.

It is job retention with a vengeance.

Ever-increasing huge sums of money being spent on low-priority country with naturally small, stabilised pest numbers.

Money being wasted on remote country whereas the farm/bush edge buffer-zone is the ultimate and most cost-effective killing ground, at least for bovine Tb control.

What office employees and vector-control managers fail to realise is that when your target species is in low numbers for whatever reason ... that is the time to throw all your resources at them.

Constant pressure is the only way to combat any pest.

With regular methodology, sooner or later, hunter/trap/poison will meet prey.

It is called the law of averages.

We proved this with the venison industry where, in a few short years, hunters on foot and in helicopters in what was possibly the last great hunt in human history, eventually reduced the vast numbers of feral deer, chamois and tahr to manageable numbers.

You may never actually wipe out the target species, but when reduced to low numbers they become less of a problem.

It is fifty years now that 1080 has now been in use.

To be entirely cynical, I believe in the old forensic maxim of follow the money.

This means 50 years of application, tens of thousands of tonnes of 1080 toxin and increasing mega-millions of dollars being spent on this particular money-go-round.

We spent $26 million on possum control in 1992 and $83 million last year.

At the moment, there is no sign that this massive and regular use of an aerially delivered supertoxin is working.

Despite the unprovable claims of 95% kill ratios, three to five years later the choppers take off with the same loads of poison over the same terrain.

And this is what is going to happen in Otago, with too much or total reliance on aerial 1080!Rabbits: the authorities keep bombing them with 1080 and charge the landowners.

They have an army of compliance officers counting rabbits, wave the Macleans index of rabbit droppings per metre, hound non-compliers and get that lovely warm feeling of a job well done.

This can go on for another century.

Whereas the solution to the rabbit problem is basically simple.

Most of the mammals I have sought for 14 professional years have been free-ranging, the animals of the bush and high tops and the vulgar Trichosurus vulpecula which I slaughtered with cyanide in their thousands in the mountain ranges of both islands on the bounty system.

And I am talking thousands.

But I pursued animals which were free-range and had no known domicile except they may have inhabited a certain forest region.

Not so, the rabbit.

They live in holes in the ground.

They are vulnerable and relatively easy to find.

Unlike hares which when disturbed use speed and distance to retain their freedom, rabbits disturbed even by the bark of a dog will head for the safety of their burrows.

If the money spent on aerial 1080 was spent on hitting rabbits where they actually live ... there would in a few short years be no rabbit problem.

Fumigation of rabbit burrows has been tried in the past with such chemicals as phosgene, larvacide and cynogas.

Today, we have Magtoxin and Pindone.

But I doubt if these killers are being used proficiently.

It is obvious that a ground-dwelling pest is extremely vulnerable where it lives.

It can be readily found by dogs but any fumigant laid near the tunnel mouth which can be then blocked by clods of earth or even balloons is of little consequence unless it can be dispersed deeper into the burrow. After a squirt of the preferable gas from a 2m nozzle, the gas can be further driven down the burrow by a simple rotary or ratchet air-pump.

This is where previous applications of fumigants have failed.

This method will be painstaking and laborious but it means competent operators can achieve almost 100% kills.

Given GPS and quadbike mobility, multiple teams of two can slowly and efficiently cover the enormous landscapes of Otago.

It might take a few years before getting the correlated and cumulative results, with their associated rechecks and spot cleanups, even with backup gun and dog ... but no animal can possibly survive constant pressure on where it actually lives in a contained environment.

It surely has to be better than another century of the hit-and-miss methods of the past, and the present ill-informed use of 1080.

• Mike Bennett is a former professional hunter and an author. He lives in Barrytown.

Story...Otago Daily Times.