The Department of Conservation aerially 1080-poisoned 61,000 hectares of the Waitutu Forest and the Princess Mountains, Fiordland, 11-12 March 2020, two weeks before lockdown.

Lhen, as soon as we went into Level 2, they poisoned the Eglinton Valley, Fiordland. (Started on 19 May; completed on 25 May 2020).

1)  Eglinton Valley, Fiordland, 7,842 hectares (last poisoned September, 2019; poisoned again May, 2020)

2)  Waikaia Forest, Northern Southland, 7,000 hectares (fourth poisoning in 5.5 years, scheduled June, 2020)

3)  Wet Jacket Peninsula, Dusky Sound, Fiordland, 40,000 hectares (never before poisoned)

4)  Nelson Lakes National Park, Lake Rotoiti, Mt Robert and the headwaters of Lake Rotoroa, 34,000 hectares (notified by VCS Marlborough, July 1 to August 31, but not yet poisoned)

5)  Mt Te Kinga forests, Lake Brunner, West Coast, 3,700 hectares, (notified, RNZ news item 29 May, but not yet poisoned)

6)  Punakaiki, West Coast, 43,000 hectares (notified by VCS Greymouth, but not yet poisoned)

7)  Buller South, West Coast ( Paparoa Range as well as foothills and Pakihi terraces between the Buller River and Four Mile Road south of Charleston), 18,500 hectares (notified, OSPRI, July 2020)

8)  Radiant Range and Mokihinui, West Coast, 72,460 hectares ( notified, OSPRI, July 2020)

TOTAL (including Waitutu) = 390,000 hectares and 780 tonnes of 1080 poison baits.

I seriously thought a pandemic and its ensuing economic chaos would put an end to aerial 1080 poison. I thought the government might have a last blast, but this is something else. Jacinda’s Labour Government has turned 1080 poisoning and trapping into a make-work scheme. The only income this scheme makes is from the TAXPAYER!

I think the only thing that will end aerial 1080 poison and this mad desire to kill everything introduced into our forests will be nuclear war. [There has been the feeling that the deaths of humans would stop it, but we know that if it happened, it would be covered up: attributed to botulism or something. —Eds]