Thread: The truth is out...

Watching TVNZ news tonight I noted with interest an article on the Mackenzie Country which informed us about a new area of special interest. It was a typical act of average journalism... gratuitous pictures of cute furry animals, DOC staff getting emotional over aforementioned cute furry animals... a bloke declaring "he likes seeing things caught in traps because it gives him something to do"... and a boastful announcement that DOC was going to have an all-out war on introduced preditors in this new area of special interest because of course these predators are responsible for killing all our cute furry native animals.

What a great idea.

I found the area of operations surprising. Generally speaking the new conservation effort covered a large area, including Aoraki Mt. Cook. I'm no expert and I admit I've not climbed Mt. Cook, but I've done a bit of walking around the hills and I'm not sure there are too many preditors living up there. I guess that's largely irrelevant. (Nothing like including a vast area of high altitude land mass that is permanently predator-free in order to make your statistics look spectacular.)

Now all me a cynic (primarily because I am) but this "new" plan smacks of being part of another initiative - extermination... errr, sorry... "lowering the numbers of Tahr in the area to an acceptable and sustainable number" - read: zero. For me the new initiative is just too closely related to the Tahr program to be an accident and it demonstrates a clear desire by DOC to clear out a significant area of our National Park of anything that isn't considered to be a small cute furry native animal.

Be very certain there is a bigger picture to be had. Compartmentalized declarations disguise the truth. Its a tried and true adage - divide and conquer.