Special report
Victoria’s National Parks are being closed off to allow fallow deer to be bombarded with 1080 poison. The proposal has drawn strong criticism from the Australian hunting public and also New Zealand’s Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust.
Laurie Collins, spokesman for the Trust warned Australia not to use 1080.
“My advice to Australia is don’t use 1080. Don’t make NZ’s ecologically tragic mistake,” he said.
The report of the Australian 1080 operation came via a Facebook site “Field Sports Britain” which reported Victoria was cracking down on increased fallow deer numbers. National Parks are being closed to allow a “massacre” of deer by poison. Farmers say they are shooting hundreds of deer with little impact and want to put out feed containers laced with 1080.
However Laurie Collins who worked on the first NZ 1080 trials in the 1950s as a Forest Service trainee says he came to realise 1080 is an unethical, cruel, ecosystem-damaging toxin.
Laurie Collins – advice to Australia – don’t make NZ’s tragic ecological mistake by using 1080.
“NZ’s bureaucracy and an often dysfunctional Department of Conservation has stubbornly continued with 1080 on public lands despite much public opposition. NZ’s poison industry has become a big, bureaucratic, corrupted operation “ he said.
Many NZ native birds are now endangered, for example kea, morepork, robins, falcon and others.
“The bureaucracy with “smoke and mirrors” spin fudges the truth to justify its policy,” he says.
Laurie Collins said 1080, first developed as an insecticide, was patented in Germany in 1927.
“1080 knows no species boundaries, killing everything that breathes oxygen and which ingests it – insects, birds and animals.”
Research shows fast breeding species like rats recover quickly from 1080, breed prolifically and in four years can reach four times original numbers. Stoats whose main prey is rats then explode in numbers.
“All DOC and OSPRI have done is cause rat and stoat population explosions.
Valuable native birds, deer and insects (food of insectivorous birds and vital for pollination) die.
1080 disrupts the ecosystem and is an unethical cruel poison taking two or more days to kill he says.
“Animals undergo violent vomiting, seizures, and frenzied agony. Carcasses retain the poison and a bird or animal scavenging, dies and endures a horrible death,” says Laurie Collins.
A deer after 48 hours death throes that ingested 1080
I read with great shock today, OZ is to carpet bomb their forests with 1080, the worlds most toxic killer of all creatures metabolizing oxygen for life.
Expect Koalas,Roos & Walabies, plus many species of birds & insects to die.
Shame on Oz, failing to heed the NZ warning to steer well clear of this folly.
I would have thought the recent devastating fires would be sufficient environmental desaster without compounding it by poisoning. Still, as seems common these days, ignorance knows no bounds. Those officials authorizing this are first degree CRIMINALS.
Unless your baiting is sort on (that is species-specific), it will be impossible to avoid the poisoning of non-target species. What sort of mis-management has led to the eruption of deer numbers anyway?
Surely an open season for deer hunting would enable the highly discriminant method of shooting to bring their number under control, and would be far more ethically desirable than the use of a pesticide which is in some countries, strictly controlled, if not completely banned?
I would wager NZ government’s SOE will be supplying the 1080 to the naive Australian National Parks bureaucracy. Another sure certainty is NZ’s Department of Conservation will be advising them.
When in Australia in Victoria I went to see the Buchan Caves. It is a National Park and I enquired at the office desk about species of deer present. The woman was horrified. “Oh they are an invasive pest,” she declared.
So it’s not just NZ afflicted with “pest phobia.” Some in Australia already have caught it.
Good o see your informative on line presence CORANZ. Keep up the good work.
The Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust has written letters to the “Melbourne Age” nd “The Australian” newspapers. We presume and hope – unlike a number of NZ newspapers – the letters will be published.