In the quiet of New Zealand forests, hidden from public view, tens of thousands of animals are dying. Screaming. Squealing. Writhing. Convulsing. Fluttering. Suffering. These animals have been poisoned by helicopter drops of lethal 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate) poison baits.
These poison baits are dropped by New Zealand government to target rats, stoats and possums. But the poisons are indiscriminate, and can cruelly kill any animals who ingest baits or a poisoned carcass.
Animals killed include *wild deer, bleeding from body orifices, organs engorged, blood vessels bursting. *endangered parrots -kea (77% of monitored kea killed at N. Okarito; 40% at Fox Glacier); birds (morepork owls, flightless weka, kaka, falcons…); bees; intertebrates; wild pigs, goats, rabbits, hares, chamois (goat-antelope), tahr, wallabies. And on farms and rural residences, dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, and even horses succumb as bykill of the aerial poisoning war on ‘pests’.
Forest and Bird states “1080 poisoning is a humane way to kill mammalian pests.”
The nasty part is that brodifacoum, a poison graded 8/10 for its ability to cause animal suffering, needed to be introduced first to kill pests inside the fence. It also killed native birds including weka and pukeko.
Do the ends justify the means? A human equivalent would be if a ruling party decided to clear out a country, exterminating all unwanted people and restocking with different people who are representatives of a “chosen race”. Wait a minute, hasn’t that been done before?
Andrea Midgen, chief executive of the SPCA, recently spoke out about the associated animal cruelty saying, “1080 (and other poisons) causes intense, prolonged suffering to animals and therefore we cannot support its use”.
From the No to 1080 use in NZ Facebook page. Read the details of NZ’s Molesworth Station drop in mainstream media below. If we the public treated our animals in this way, we would be convicted of cruelty to animals. Not DoC. They kill non target animals with impunity. Three hundred and forty five deer is a lot of animals. This is happening also to sheep, cattle, horses, our native birds and pet animals, while DoC tells us it targets pests. Dying from 1080 poisoning has been likened by a Vet to two days of being electrocuted.
The poster below has been circulated by Professor Marc Bekoff of Colorado University with the following comment:
“This is utterly inhumane and simply wrong — every welfare and conservation organization should openly oppose this slaughter” … Marc Bekoff, Prof of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, U.S.A.
Hunters have paid for scientists to fly over the site of a 1080 drop, thought to be behind hundreds of dead deer, to count carcasses.
The toxic bait was dropped over a third of Molesworth Station, the country’s largest farm, by helicopter in October as part of a national possum control operation.
The Marlborough branch of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association then hired two helicopters to methodically sweep the area, having planned the survey in advance.
Hundreds of carcasses reported after Molesworth drop to fight tuberculosis.
A 1080 poison operation targeting possum on New Zealand’s largest farm has angered hunters who fear it’s needlessly killed hundreds of red deer.
Deer hunters have self-funded an aerial survey in the last few weeks to count just how many of the local red deer population have been killed after a 1080 drop in late-October by TBFree NZ to control possums on the historic 180,000-hectare Molesworth Station.
While the Marlborough branch of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association (NZDA) says the data is still being collated, with a final report still a month away, online hunting forums suggest as many as 345 red deer have been spotted lying dead on the land.
“There were certainly dead deer seen,” said Wayne Smith, NZDA Marlborough branch committee member, “and, from observations, not as many live deer running around the hills as we would’ve expected.”
