An opinion writer published in The Informer laments the dismissal of 200 DOC scientists. How many scientists must DOC have to be able to afford to lose 200 of them? Maybe they are the 1080 researchers no longer needed in such numbers. Having studied reports from DOC’s 1080 scientists for over 30 years I have observed a pattern.
The 1080 publicity gives the impression there is a sound scientific base behind the 1080 business. This impression is widely believed.
But the business of spreading 1080 baits had been underway for decades before we saw any research into the effects of 1080 in the environment. There was little need for any science back then because only very few NZ’ers come face to face with 1080 in their daily lives. As 1080 use spread, more and more people came into close contact with the poison the number of concerns grew.
With each new outcry a scientific research project was designed to show that the concern was groundless. A member of the public saw dead birds or watched one of his animals die of 1080 poisoning and a scientist was employed to show there was no cause for alarm. 1080 was safe and effective.
In the ’70’s and early ’80’s, each 1080 scientist strived to become an expert in one aspect of 1080 spread; the rat expert, the gecko expert, the bird expert, the insect expert and so on. !080 science provided a whole new avenue for scientists looking for a job.
The bird expert found birds were poisoned by 1080 drops but ‘concluded’ that these deaths were sustainable because the birds would bounce back.
The insect expert found that aerial 1080 drowned the insects under a cloud of 1080 dust and failed to hide the fact. He was thrust aside. The bird man who had shown such positive initiative regarding the dead birds, replaced the insect expert, repeated the insect expert’s research and didn’t see a cloud at all. He concluded no harm to insects from 1080.
The tree expert declared our forests would be ruined without 1080. The water expert found 1080 in the streams and in all the creatures he studied in the 1080-laden streams, but concluded that 1080 was harmless to all aquatic life. The frog expert monitored his frogs before and after a 1080 drop on the Coromandel. After the drop, the frogs had disappeared but the frog expert concluded that was not because of the 1080, it was because tourists had entered the country and taken those frogs to sell them as valuable rare specimens overseas.
A Tb-infected animal was imported onto a farm near Tairua, the answer was to surround the farm with 1080 because the possum ‘expert’ had concluded that the possum must have been the cause of the Tb outbreak, not the imported animal. We don’t just have DOC and Regional councils spreading 1080, we now have Tb and Predator-free departments to increase the flow of 1080.
Motoring along one morning a scientist started counting the number of dead possums on the road. If there were so many possums along such a length of road and multiply that number by the area of NZ at the end of that drive and he comes up with 70 million possums in NZ. He tells his mate, and it soon becomes a published scientific fact.
NZ has 70 million possums. He became the possum counting expert. When it finally sunk home that the’ 70 million possums’ figure was quite unsustainable the number was halved, equally scientifically.
The 1080 ‘science’ lacks credibility. Immense chicanery is involved.
The 1080 occupation is just one massive government business riding on the very “science-based, evidence-driven decisions” which are largely contrived. I am with the sceptics on this.
As Malcolm Campbell said, The Informer, October 27, page 30 – Follow the money.
