Thread: Pre baiting 1080

Originally Posted by Woody

Y know, thats a comment often made by the advocates for aerial poisoning, but when one examines similar occupations to trapping such as high country shepherding or commercial fishing or forestry work of general hands on farms a similar problem exists but not to the same extent. The difference is that the outdoor semi isolated jobs I listed are leading to recognised qualified and regularly paid professions. Plenty of people just simply love the outdoors including hunters trampers fishers mountaineers skiers etc; so if trapping became formalised as a regularly paid profession and given the respect as such and with adequate rewards incentives including proper project planning then the pest management scenario wpuld change radically, bearing in mind investing similar billions of dollars invested in that direction instead of aerial bomb and repeat repeat with its collatetal damage and socio economic disadvantages. The universal committment to the industry formalising it has never been prolumgated by goverment and should be. The closest govt had come was deer culling by internal affairs and nzfs but even that did not go much beyond badic training at Dip Flat. The stagnant mindset needs to change.

I've worked in the pest control industry ever since I can left school. I can honestly tell you finding staff and retaining them is dam near impossible.
We have done some of the blocks via ground control that are now in the aerial 1080 program.
Getting people to ride around on flat farmland doing possum control is hard enough let alone getting people to fly in and stay in a tent. Dealing with average weather and grovelling on your hand and knees through some of that scrub country with a heavy pack on every day puts people off really quickly.