The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, has again strongly recommended that DOC (the Department of Conservation) increase the use of 1080 poison to control animal pests. DOC has been trying to find other ways to kill these pests because many people continue to protest about the use of 1080. In the meantime, possums, rats and stoats are eating our native forests and birds. Dr Wright says that in the future there may be a better way to get rid of these predators but if we wait until then, it will be too late. Our native birds, lizards, insects and trees only live in New Zealand not in other countries. If they become extinct here, they will be lost forever.
Possums are the biggest pests. There are 30 million of them in our forests. They eat 7 million tonnes of leaves and fruit from the trees each year. They also eat birds, eggs, insects and grass on farms. Because they carry TB, farm animals can become infected with TB.
For 80 million years, New Zealand birds had no other animals to eat them. Many New Zealand birds, like the kiwi, do not fly. However, Maori brought rats to New Zealand 700 years ago and Europeans brought possums and many other predatory animals 150 years ago.
1080 is a chemical that is similar to a natural poison found in plants in South Africa, South America and Australia. It is bio-degradable. It breaks down in the soil to become salt and vinegar. It is dropped from planes into forest areas.
Vocabulary
• pests – animals which cause a problem
• get rid of – kill them
• predator (n) – an animal which eats another animal (predatory adj)
• extinct – die out
• infected – get this disease
• TB – tuberculosis
• bio-degradable – it disappears in the soil