The S-Files

Poisonous Brew's the Tool, Wherein We'll Play the Stupid Fool

Contra Celsum nominates the Department of Conservation for an S-Award

The Department of Conservation (“DOC”) stubbornly continues to drop vast tonnages of the poison 1080 into New Zealand's forests and waterways. It recently was exposed as being responsible for killing rare and protected birds as a consequence of its malfeasance.

Citation:

The Department of Conservation, believed by many to be the enforcement and execution arm of the NZ Forest and Bird Society, was recently responsible for the deaths of seven kea, killed by one of DOC's infamous aerial 1080 poison scatterings.

The kea is a native parrot that is both endangered and protected. A recent DOC aerial 1080 drop in the area of the Fox Glacier killed about half of a kea population being monitored by DOC. This catastrophe of collateral damage has caused yet another review of the policy of scattering the virulent poison 1080 over the countryside in vast quantities.

The review has produced a draft report stating that 1080 drops have probably been devastating to some populations of kea.

New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world to use 1080 poison. We deploy almost the entire world's production of the poison into our forests and waterways very year. The aerial dropping of 1080 is a bureaucratic, but very crude and primitive, plan to combat possums, stoats, and weasels which cause so much damage to flora and fauna.

The collateral damage from the aerial poison drops is extensive, but details and knowledge effectively suppressed. Deer, dogs, and every other mammal have been damaged by this non-targeted, broad brush, crude approach to possum control. The deathly impact upon bird life is unknown, although anecdotal evidence is considerable. Waterways have been persistently exposed to the poison.

Every so often an “incident” occurs which reaches the media, such as the death of the seven keas. If we, as individuals, killed a kea we would be liable to prosecution and punishment. But government-caused-collateral-damage-deaths are another matter. They are legitimatised by being part of a larger, higher cause.

We do not doubt the deleterious effects of possums. We do not doubt that poisons are an effective means of control. We completely reject, however, the crude, broad-brush methods of DOC which end up scattering the deadly poison far and wide, resulting in enormous actual and potential damage to other species.

Possums, weasels and stoats need to be exposed to appropriate poisons using bait stations that only those animals can access, where collateral damage is kept to an absolute minimum, and the poison is prevented from getting into the waterways. DOC needs to lay aside its crude blunderbus and start putting in the hard yards.

Department of Conservation: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied