Opponents of planned poison drop meet in Whangaparoa

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Thu, 26 May 2011 10:51p.m.

A poison drop has been planned for Shakespear Regional Park

A poison drop has been planned for Shakespear Regional Park

By Ali Ikram

Opponents of a mass poison drop at a sanctuary on the Whangaparoa Peninsula met tonight.

They want the public to keep watch on the project at Shakespear Regional Park, to make sure the poison intended to kill rats and mice doesn’t end up in the food chain.

Starting in July, the Auckland Council will aerially drop 16.5 tonnes of Brodifacoum poison into the park, to kill 10 predator species that are endangering native lizards and birds living there.

A Landcare Research report into Brodifacoum from 2010 concluded that there has been “no ongoing evaluation or monitoring of the longer term environmental impacts of sustained field applications”.

The council accepts that non-target animals such as pukekos, paradise ducks and dotterels are likely to die from eating the poison, but believe their populations will bounce back stronger after the drop.

The park won’t be open for 120 days after the drop – that being the estimated time it will take for all the poison to break down.

Watch the video for the full report

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Comments

27 May 2011 04:59p.m.

Supermarket Alliance wrote:

free living biota is the enemy of all true freedom

27 May 2011 01:54p.m.

Mary wrote:

I endevoured with submissions to help stop this irresponsible carnage. Brodifacoum is a clear food chain poison for which there is copius evidence of its migration into areas other than where it is originally used. The birds bounce back theory is just that a theory, nothing bounces back from death. Brodifacoum is known to accumulate in the survivors livers and other organs, insects will be full of it, future generations of birds will be affected by it. For this operation to continue is irresponsible of all the departments & councils involved, it is clearly willful blindness to the truly awful consequences of this lazy action. Get out and hunt the rats etc, understand them and do not kill the rest of our native biodiversity and cause on going consequences for everything else, the general public included. New Zealand's love affair with poisons has to stop. Poison should be a last action, if at all. We rush out to all our problems with a poison solution. It is the green of NZs clean green claim, the dye of the poison gives us the green, our actions using poison are unsustainable and abhorred by other countries many of whom find it hard to believe the volume of poison we use in our environment and over our people. We are the most toxic tourist destination is a quote from an overseas website, our people are lovely but our environment is toxic. Come on New Zealanders it is your land that is being poisoned to extinction by people charged with looking after it - imagine if you took and illegal tegal from the bush from time to time? You would be censured, fined, and probably jailed and the the Department of Conservation (Destruction) kills all the time and on YOUR land