- Friday 30 July 2010
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Activists aim to step up 1080 fight
Martinborough 1080 protester Graham Higginson says international pressure needs to be placed on New Zealand to halt aerial poison drops, but local protesters will continue with activism from the inside.
Mr Higginson, speaking ahead of the Project Kaka aerial drop of the poison across 22,000 hectares of Tararua Forest Park in spring, said he was on the executive of the national protest organisation, New Zealand Wildlands Biodiversity Management Society.
The controversial poison is used to kill possums, rats and other rodents in forests bordering farmland to eliminate bovine tuberculosis in livestock.
Mr Higginson said the society counted as a victory a vote last year by the Taupo District Council to ban the use of the aerial drops in its district. ''We are going to approach the regional and district councils here as well this year and see if we can talk them round to the same vote and viewpoint as Taupo,'' he said.
''The New Zealand Government runs the company that makes the stuff, which they persist in dropping deep in forest areas where nobody can see the terrible damage it actually causes.
''It's a really frightening example of government control and it seems like only international pressure will bring change now.''
Mr Higginson said he had formerly employed about 40 trappers nationwide before the advent of widespread aerial poison drops and acknowledges he had a vested interest in banning the practice.
''But Wildlands Biodiversity is a national organisation made up of hunters and scientists and forestry workers as well.
''It's been rumoured we've been classed as terrorists, which is quite ironic when it's the Government that's terrorising our environment while still expecting the public to pay millions for no justifiable return at the end.''
Mr Higginson prefers alternative methods to minimise bovine TB that include ground control using cyanide paste, or pellets, to target possums, automatic resetting traps and bait stations.
Inaccessible areas could be controlled by ground operations and did not require aerial drops, he said.
The Environmental Risk Management Authority released its latest review of 1080 use in 2007. The review acknowledged there are risks but concluded aerial 1080 use was ''the lesser evil''.
Protesters Steve and Clyde Graf have produced two DVDs about the effects of 1080 on New Zealand wildlife. The first, A Shadow of Doubt, released in 2006 and rated Adults Only, is a 90-minute feature film. The second film, Paradise Poisoned, was released last year and has just been nominated for an environmental award at a UK film festival.
Clyde Graf told the Times-Age last week the brothers might film parts of the Tararua Forest Park operation.
Mr Graf agreed with Mr Higginson that international pressure on the New Zealand Government to ban 1080 aerial drops was the only avenue now left for Kiwi protesters.
