Thread: Exterminate deer

Actually, the TB so-called threat was examined by the NZ Institute for Economic Research, commissioned by NZ treasury who were questioning the extensive use of taxpayer funds. You can look it up on the net. The title is "coughing up for TB". That should give you a hint of what the NZ Institute thought!

In the event one assumes possum needs management, the real question become one of alternatives to 1080, such as trapping. Rat populations, while getting an initial knockback in some instances, rapidly recover to more than double pre-drop population levels. The cycle is sell sustaining and cyclically destructive to other species.

AHB / TB Free NZ LTD and Doc and Co' will tell Ministers and public that 1080 operations are cheaper than trapping, but do not publish the fact that most trappers survive unpaid except by virtue of the captured products that they process and sell. On the other hand, the true costs of 1080 operations average over $55 per hectare from the public purse. If a trapper were to be paid this much money he would be able to earn over $1000 a day!, not counting any extra income derived from animals caught.

Next, the poisoners will tell you the terrain is too remote and rugged to be trapped. This is pure bullshit and a great percentage of poisoned terrain is very easy country, including roaded plantations. If it was all so rugged you couldn't hunt it could you.

There is seldom any post poison monitoring of protected species, let alone deer or possums.

In the meantime the regulations now permit direct dropping of the poison into your stream and lakes, to within 200m of water intakes, both public and private. if you are affected, they will consider giving you bottled water for 48 hours.

In the meantime, the public continues in it's apathy. The Hunua operations around the Auckland city drop also were considered to have a beneficial side effect of killing the deer up there. The Jaffa's slumber on.

Worse, they refuse to test the water for coliforms and other pollution from carcasses rotting in there after drops.