Massive 1080 Drop sprung on South Westland

The Animal Health Board has approved a massive 1080 drop in an area comprising of approximately 50 kilometres adjacent to State Highway 6 from the Waitaha River in the North to the Waitangi in the South.

The Taupo based Pest Management company EPRO, have this week been approaching local residents& affected parties explaining the drop & asking people to sign communication forms – these indicate support for 1080 when signed whether you do or not. If you don’t want the drop withdraw your signature.

Many people including FATE, Farmers Against Ten Eighty, have been asking both the West Coast Regional Council & the Animal Health Board whether there are any pending drops & as late as last week were assured that none were planned. Inquiries have revealed that the Regional Council & TB Free West Coast committee had no knowledge of the drop & the areas marked on the scant information supplied by Epro appear to be at considerable variance with the consents granted in 2005.

Many residents including farmers, tourist operators & hunters question the necessity of any drop let alone one on this scale. Given that there has been no verified TB possum ever in the proposed drop zone & there is no farm infection, & ground control by independent contractors has met all the AHB rigid standards for % of residual trap catch criteria, why is it happening?

There will be no monitoring to establish how many possums there are in the area. There is no monitoring of any non-target species or taonga.

There is no proposed exclusion of any walking tracks or recreational areas or special ecological areas.

It is hard to see any justification for the drop on any grounds.

The AHB should concentrate on its core business of ridding N.Z. farms of bovine Tuberculosis.

They have failed to recognise that there are many areas, in fact most areas of NZ, where the possum is not the vector for the spread of TB and South Westland is one of them.

The AHB would have far more credibility if they concentrated on those persistently infected farms & found out why they remain so, rather than wasting money on completely unnecessary aerial applications of hundreds of tones of on the most deadly poisons know to mankind in an area which does not have a problem. This proposed drop will do nothing to further the reduction of TB infection in South Westland because there isn’t any.

ENDS

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