Thread: Decades of 1080….before and after

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

continual drops are very injurious to birds and invertebrates.

But not as continual as predation.
But I guess that is part of the complexity of this debate as sometimes the driver is TB control and sometimes it is conservation.
My overriding opinion is that if aerial poisoning are too injurious to a block of land, then bird/wildlife sanctuaries wouldn’t work and thrive like they do.
Blue ducks aren’t thriving in the Able Tasman at the moment through natural processes..

200 ha per 10km line = $13,000+ . @ $65+.
Plenty of leeway and time. Go figure. Kill rat another comes along. Put 10 rat traps around each position etc. It's called initiative..

Originally Posted by Woody

200 ha per 10km line = $13,000+ . @ $65+.
Plenty of leeway and time. Go figure. Kill rat another comes along. Put 10 rat traps around each position etc. It's called initiative..

so now we have up to 11 traps per ha ??

No there is not plenty of lee way and sure as there aint plenty of time if you strike a mast year... you wont be able to get around your traps quick enough. They will be full 2hrs after you have checked them or the bait will off been eaten off by mice...

At work we get through about 30-40 DOC 250 traps per day. It gets time consuming when you do it properly (don’t touch the bait with hands, clean out the soupy hedgehog, grub the grass off the entryway of the trap but not too deep to leave a puddle) This is with a drive time of <30 minutes to sight. The running cost of an employee is ~$500 per day. (wages/vehicle/training/ppe etc) Servicing cost per trap per day works out at around $15.

I do about 50 a24 per day on my volunteering on my day off. That’s a pretty big day. Going from the above you could say $10 per service for A24 traps.

Transport to sight is often the biggest thief of time, if you’re not trapping close to the road the numbers above go out the window.

Take $65 per ha off the aerial poison indistry and offer it to ground based and see what happens. Money talks. E.g. The deer wars. Enterprising businesses and people might surprise the currrent thinking.

Originally Posted by Woody

Take $65 per ha off the aerial poison indistry and offer it to ground based and see what happens. Money talks. E.g. The deer wars. Enterprising businesses and people might surprise the currrent thinking.

Exactly. Money talks.
The deers wars came and went. Now deer numbers steadily increase without the same magnitude of pressure from private enterprise as cost, compliance and complexity increase and markets change with the passage of time.

Originally Posted by Moutere

Exactly. Money talks.
The deers wars came and went. Now deer numbers steadily increase without the same magnitude of pressure from private enterprise as cost, compliance and complexity increase and markets change with the passage of time.

The markets for venison still exist for one example - however they have been severely constrained due to large areas where animals cannot be taken for consumption due to the risk of residual levels of poison detecable in the animal products. Any shipment heading overseas needs to be at zero detectable, or the entire shipment is canned which couold run many tens of containers. Financial suicide to risk it... I know of a few outfits that could start up export tomorrow if not for the risk - this is the same as recently found with 1080 detectable residues in certain honey products.

Poisoning is a solution, that is true but the answer I don't think is solely poisoning and solely 'uncontrolled' air dropping as the broadcast method. Applying the bait by station, logging/documenting and either disposing or recovering of carcasses, and recovery of unused baits as well as funding a research regime for testing and establishing levels of residual poisons across the feral populations would go a long way towards allowing a commercial control mechanism to restart. Against that - you have a lot of potential for spatial conflict on increasing numbers of people wanting to utilise a shrinking allocation for resource (this is the same problem with commercial/recreational fisheries in a nutshell).

Originally Posted by No.3

The markets for venison still exist for one example - however they have been severely constrained due to large areas where animals cannot be taken for consumption due to the risk of residual levels of poison detecable in the animal products. Any shipment heading overseas needs to be at zero detectable, or the entire shipment is canned which couold run many tens of containers. Financial suicide to risk it... I know of a few outfits that could start up export tomorrow if not for the risk - this is the same as recently found with 1080 detectable residues in certain honey products.

Poisoning is a solution, that is true but the answer I don't think is solely poisoning and solely 'uncontrolled' air dropping as the broadcast method. Applying the bait by station, logging/documenting and either disposing or recovering of carcasses, and recovery of unused baits as well as funding a research regime for testing and establishing levels of residual poisons across the feral populations would go a long way towards allowing a commercial control mechanism to restart. Against that - you have a lot of potential for spatial conflict on increasing numbers of people wanting to utilise a shrinking allocation for resource (this is the same problem with commercial/recreational fisheries in a nutshell).

My comparison to the wild venison market was that even with big pressure and big private enterprise the deer endured.
Possums and rats are no different and I would also challenge anecdotal evidence that possums ever declined significantly due to the fur market.

I do however agree that aerial poison is only a tool that one day needs to give way to other maintained control methods. I am genuinely heartened be the inroads being made in the Perth Valley for example.
I am not pro, nor against. Maybe indifferent to a necessary tool.

Originally Posted by Moutere

My comparison to the wild venison market was that even with big pressure and big private enterprise the deer endured.
Possums and rats are no different and I would also challenge anecdotal evidence that possums ever declined significantly due to the fur market.

I do however agree that aerial poison is only a tool that one day needs to give way to other maintained control methods. I am genuinely heartened be the inroads being made in the Perth Valley for example.
I am not pro, nor against. Maybe indifferent to a necessary tool.

What do you believe was the maximum possum population total in NZ ?

Originally Posted by Woody

Take $65 per ha off the aerial poison indistry and offer it to ground based and see what happens. Money talks. E.g. The deer wars. Enterprising businesses and people might surprise the currrent thinking.

How would you put and individual or crew into the Karamea bend, mobilise and sustain the operation for $65/ Ha?

Originally Posted by Moutere

How would you put and individual or crew into the Karamea bend, mobilise and sustain the operation for $65/ Ha?

What is the poison drop frequency / return ?

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

What is the poison drop frequency / return ?

Wouldn’t have a clue, hazard a guess at 4 or five years?

I thought an issue of relying on traps is the inaccessibility/lack of tracks/general denseness of large sections of the bush.

That is a big factor right?

Agreed. However the pest problem costs are not directly linked to any market. The heli shooting of deer was never subsidised by govt either and if this were the generally case today I have no doubt there would be more of it done. There may be a few especially targeted areas but these just serve to demonstrate there are alternatives to aerial poison.

Where are the areas immune to declining native species without poisoning?

You know as well as I do there is no point in repeat poisoning if there are no predators.