I’ve been in New Zealand for 9 months now and I am in just about every Facebook group against 1080. I’m quite horrified and actually depressed about the stories, photos and videos I have seen.

I’ve noticed the media never tell both sides of the controversial issue. The only news I see is about vandalism, which seems very unfair considering most people in the Facebook groups are professionals, retirees and just decent law-abiding citizens concerned about the health of the planet.

My biggest concerns are not only the immense cruelty and suffering of the victims, but the hundreds of pets that are killed every year and of course the many birds and insects that feed off the carcasses, and how this affects the ecosystem, plus the dead animals that get washed into the waterways.

I’m an aged care worker and a few of my elderly clients in their 90s who were ex-hunters told me how disgusted they were about 1080 back in the 1960s.

One client described to me how he used to hunt in the Lewis Pass and a week after a drop he returned to find dead birds everywhere. The forest were silent. You could not hear one bird, he said.

I’m considering moving back to my country as I don’t feel it’s very safe here for my pets. The forests in New Zealand are eerily and tragically silent.

Louise Watson of Lyttelton

(This first appeared in The Press on 24 April 2018.)