Thread: Decades of 1080….before and after

Originally Posted by No.3

Fark we'll never de-rat NZ. Not with the numbers in urban and urban/rural interface areas...

not to mention..it only takes two to jump ship and we back to scratch again.

The issue being how rats reproduce from a young age similarly like stoats. For sheer versatility as a hunter the stoat would be hard to beat anywhere in the world. When they can run up sheer rock faces it is a sight to behold. My dogs years ago "killed" a stoat [like in giving it a sizeable munching] It lay knackered on the river bed and we turned around and it was gone.

Rat populations get a partial knockback after 1080 poison drops but then breed rapidly to far exceed the original population within 18 months. The phenomenon known as rat irruptions.

Originally Posted by Woody

Rat populations get a partial knockback after 1080 poison drops but then breed rapidly to far exceed the original population within 18 months. The phenomenon known as rat irruptions.

Got a link ?

Originally Posted by sore head stoat

Got a link ?

Yeah there is info out there - I used to have a hardcopy of a paper on it. Quite staggering how resilient the little bastards are, and how responsive they are to population pressures. The phrase "cunning as a rat" didn't happen by accident! The self-management aspect of the species to respond to events outside their species' control is actually quite frightening, if an event causes them to run out of sufficient food they simply eat each other until things level back out...

Not sure if this website still rxists but try googleing rat irruptions. Or www.1080science.co.nz

Originally Posted by Woody

Not sure if this website still rxists but try googleing rat irruptions. Or www.1080science.co.nz

Yip I googled ship rat irruptions and came up with this https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets...al/casn318.pdf

I couldnt find anywhere in that paper where it says 1080 can cause ship rat irruptions. What I did find is that they are caused by food supply .

Originally Posted by sore head stoat

Yip I googled ship rat irruptions and came up with this https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets...al/casn318.pdf

I couldnt find anywhere in that paper where it says 1080 can cause ship rat irruptions. What I did find is that they are caused by food supply .

In other words aerially poisoning enhances rats food supply. Very clever eh. (Then they breed to higher numbers than pre poison drop ay

Originally Posted by Woody

In other words aerially poisoning enhances rats food supply. Very clever eh. (Then they breed to higher numbers than pre poison drop ay

No mast years enhance the food supply, then the rats breed like buggery.

Originally Posted by sore head stoat

No mast years enhance the food supply, then the rats breed like buggery.

It's a little more complicated than that, as different species 'mast' at different times. The 'mega mast' events they keep going on about I am told come about through multiple species going to seed one after the other. Knocking competition out of the running helps the rats, but also multiple litters throughout a year with warm temps and ample food just explodes things more. Rats are capable of reproducting at around the 10-weeks mark, gestation of 3 weeks and rinse and repeat. Efficient...

I think feral cats are a bigger problem than in the past - that is they have gotten bigger. Cats readily eat possum but they were a little small and light to kill an adult possum. I speculate that cats have selected towards a bigger cat, better matched to possums as a primary food source.
With an unlimited food source in possums ( easy for a cat to catch a possum a night) I expect that we will see more and more of these genetically adapted big cats in the bush to the detriment of Kiwi and Weka, Blue Duck etc

I have only once ever seen a possum eating flesh, but I have seen very high bird populations alongside very high possum numbers. They do bugger the bush and the avian food supply but from observation they seem to be a very minor predator.

Problem with the water supplies one is every area is a water supply catchment in NZ, and the steeper the country the further out the baits have to be. Bounty isn't a full solution but the biggest objection is the lack of statistics, accountability and the politics of it (money removed from the pockets of a small number of individuals and spread out at a lesser amount to a larger number of people). We have to accept that this stopped being about best outcomes for the environment a long time ago.

Pest control in NZ is NOT JUST POSSUM. This is the biggest issue with 1080 - some of the biggest bird predators are not targetted by poison drops and until we get onto that aspect of it we just are not going to get to predator free anything.

They drop lots of poison on masting afeas ay--

Originally Posted by HG Man

I grew up on a farm in the middle of the King Country, surrounded by bush, it would be nothing to shoot 100 possums in a night spot lighting driving down the road. And every farm was TB positive. A few deer around, but not many. I was 19 before I saw a northern rata flower.

Then when I was about 15 they started carpet bombing the surrounding bush with 1080. My old man talked about the green rain, it was everywhere. I'd love to know how many tonnes they dropped.

Now, its been at least a decade since a TB reactor. Prob been that long since I've seen a possum, even in the fruit trees. More deer, goats and pigs than you can shoot, I counted a mob of 13 last time I was out there.

People talk about trapping it, I've walked that bush probably more than any man ever. Its thick, dense, wet. Its also full of birds, weta, eels, kiwi, bats. Its as close to NZ before man got here as I can imagine. I'd love to take a 'trap instead of 1080' person into it and see what they think. You couldnt even put tracks through most of it.

I don't like 1080 and I'd love if there as some other solution. But there isn't. And it works.

Yup exactly same thing for me in the king country..
Seeing a wood pigeon was a rarity but now we see mobs of up to 25.
Unfortunately for me it's a necessary evil. It's not the poison it's the application however I don't see any other viable options.

I must say thats a very sad report that @Tahr posted.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/...native-species
Read it twice.
Just sad that all the hard work of the 90's that those guys put in has gone to waste.