By Tony Orman
The Tararua Ranges’ 1080 drops scheduled by OSPRI and the Greater Wellington Regional Council have no justification says the Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust. The OSPRI (formerly The Animal Health Board) planned drop east of Levin is founded on false beliefs.
Trust spokesman and conservationist Laurie Collins of the West Coast says current 1080 aerial drops on public lands in the Tararua Ranges and other areas are based on the two fallacies –
- of possums spreading TB
- that the country has a bovine TB problem.
“Neither is true,” he says. “It’s irresponsible of OSPRI to be wasting public funds and damaging the ecology of public lands with 1080 and telling fibs.”
Laurie Collins says the belief in possum-spread bovine Tb has been disproven a few years go when in Parliament the Minister of Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, disclosed that of 9830 possums autopsied, none had Tb. “Yet in 2020 we have OSPRI carrying out mass aerial 1080 poisoning in several areas including public lands such as the Tararua Ranges,” he says.
New Zealand is virtually TB-free
Laurie Collins says New Zealand is virtually TB free and probably one of the most TB-free countries in the world. The world standard for a country to declare “TB free” is 0.2% for TB infected herds and 0.1% for infected cattle. New Zealand rates of TB infection in cattle were slight, i.e. 0.0019% average generally over the last decade.
“It is so far below that required by world standards for a TB-free declaration — New Zealand must be one of the world’s most TB-free countries.”
“Of deep concern to New Zealanders who are outdoor Kiwis whether tramping, hunting, trout fishing or seeking whatever recreation in mountain areas, is the indiscriminate spreading of a poison that kills anything which ingests it.”
The poison 1080 has no “species boundaries — whether an insect, bird or animal, it kills.” he says. “Basically 1080 is an eco-system poison.”
Laurie Collins, now retired, has long and extensive experience of 1080, having been involved as a Forest Service trainee in the trials of the toxin’s first use in the late 1950s in the Caples Valley, Lake Wakatipu and in subsequent pest management work.
Transporting stock has spread TB
In the past there have been cases of farmers wrongly transporting stock from infected areas with resultant TB outbreaks on farms. OSPRI had ignored the stock transportation factor, proceeded to wrongly blame possums and then aerially spread 1080 over adjoining public lands. Laurie Collins cites such an instance in Marlborough’s Wairau Valley.
NZ’s extremely low TB infection rates raises the question whether OSPRI has a continuing role. “Instead of celebrating New Zealand’s TB-free status, OSPRI remains in denial and states its aim is total eradication of TB,” he says. “Is it that OSPRI want to continue its existence and jobs, funded by taxpayers and from farmer levies?”
Even from the first discovery of TB in possums near Westport in the late 1960s, no-one ever seems to have questioned whether the possum infected cattle, or cattle infected the possum. The default position has always been that it is possum that have infected the cattle.
Years ago being the owner of rural land paid a levy to the the then AHB ( now OSPRI) I received a glossy brochure saying we would be tb free by 2014, the latest is OSPRI said they will be operating until 2050 when the country will be pest free, what a joke. To me it is just a moneymaking scheme with some well paid jobs and keeping an SOE going making large profits.
Lies, lies and more lies. It’s about government control. Control the food source, control the people. All the jobs are government sponsored, so who wants to lose their lucrative paychecks and go against the government?.Wake up “sheeple”..This is no different than the current “planneddemic”…all based on lies and false statistics…to control the people by FEAR. This is the new world order coming to fruition. What amazes me is how apathetic the people are….all like lemmings following their leader over the cliff. WAKE UP people…use your God given brains and do not accept everything that the government or the controlled media spews.
It’s time for farmers to take action, refuse en masse to be duped into paying for a cruel residual aerial poison
This government and OSPRI are heel bent on wanting everything killed and our water made undrinkable. When that happens ….. they have won control over us as citizens. Stop this Tyranny . It is all in Agenda2030. Wake up NZ.
they would not print my comment…but what I was trying to say was basically the same…WAKE UP NZ
Sorry we missed it earlier – no censorship.
Fortunately, there have been a few dedicated people that have taken the fight to DOC and offered the only proven solution, which is output trapping contracts that can do a better job than 1080, at a similar per hectare cost if 1080 is dropped every 3 years. We are close to forcing DOC to allow output trapping contractors to be able to table competitive multi-species proposals to those being presented by the 1080 industry,
TB is spread around NZ on cattle trucks, however, once in the possum population TB is geographically stable (stays in 1 place and spreads very slowly) and can be eradicated if trappers are used and all the possums are autopsied to find the geographically stable possum TB hotspots.
It is fortunate that possums are very hard to infect with TB and Prof Morris, after doing DNA analysis, believed TB jumped, from cattle to possums, less than 20 times and this happened at a time when possums were overpopulated, starving and unhealthy. The unfortunate thing is that possums cannot contain the TB within their bodies and, just before death, lymph node lesions burst, covering the possum fur with highly infectious TB pus, which is further compounded by possums behaving strangely, which involves wandering in a daze, sometimes during daylight, which is a beacon for any inquisitive cattle, who only have to sniff or lick the possum to become infected.
The underlying reasoning, for what OSPRI is doing, is right, however, the way OSPRI is going about eradicating TB from possums is wrong and if OSPRI employed output trapping contractors, the TB hotspots would be found and TB would be very quickly (within 2-3 years) eradicated from the possum population.
Haha, all the above comments have been proven as misinformation. Thank you 1080 for saving our critically endangered species from the lazy anti 1080, non scientific community who choose to shoot and run over animals and call it proof of 1080 poisoning (remember the animals laid at the foot of parliament).