The kind of mouse trap used to catch rats and stoats.
Another onslaught is to be delivered to substantial areas of the Coromandel Peninsula and the last figures seen, indicated this poison (1080) has been in use for close to sixty years without apparently doing anything at all to heal the environment or get rid of the vermin problem. There is virtually nothing on the planet that cannot be improved.
Even the humble mouse trap has been markedly improved by adopting an over centre mechanism easily tripped by the foot pressure of the mouse. Better still the trap can be reset by simply depositing the dead mouse and better still again, the chances of having your fingers snapped is virtually nil. The thought of spreading 1080 for another sixty or seventy years into potentially urban water catchments beggars belief.
So we need better traps. My late brother Robin made such a trap to catch rats and it worked! Only one moving part and it reset itself, no batteries, no gas cylinders.
However, some trials and testing would be required with a larger version for possums and ferrets for example. I would be more than happy to have help from some engineering students at the local high schools. For some reason, quite unbeknown to me, our authorities keep plodding down the same tracks even when alternatives have been found as follows.
A couple of weeks ago with great fanfare, the government (read taxpayer) was funding an investigation into the scourge of Facial Eczema in livestock, with a solution the ultimate goal.
Facial Eczema is just about the most distressing condition an animal can suffer, where the poor creatures seek shade and suffer agonies. Our farm that had been developed from virgin peat soils was particularly susceptible to the onset of this distressing complaint.
The conditions that triggered the disease were:
• A summer or autumn dry spell resulting in litter on the soil.
• Warm muggy weather conditions.
• Light drizzly rain over a period of a few days. Although this disease could be widespread, not all farms were affected and if not, why not?
After asking the farmers whose livestock had remained eczema free about their fertiliser use and application, it was evident that those who applied regular dressings of lime had no trouble with eczema. So we ran a trial ourselves, when spore counts were sky high and applied lime on two paddocks leaving a control between the two limed ones. The spore count on the limed paddocks fell almost immediately.
News travels and we were approached by the late Vaughan Jones, a well-known agricultural adviser, who had heard of similar examples.
Jones approached Ruakura Research Station, Hamilton to conduct some trials. The boffins were not interested, saying the solution to facial eczema could not be solved that simply.
The situation worsened when a senior student at Katikati High School, with help from her father, ran some quite independent trials and crashed the sky-high spore count on the pasture making it safe for grazing.
But the boffins either cannot read or hear, or do not want to. If they did, they would rediscover knowledge from 40 or more years ago.
Nothing has changed since Galileo made his discoveries and was persecuted for speaking out.
