Cameron+Oral

My Speech
media type="custom" key="4250389" **__ Why D.o.C should stop using 1080 (Sodium-monofluroacetate) __** Sodium-monofluroacetate other wise known as 1080, is a Class-A poison that is very, very generously used throughout New Zealand’s native bush. Being a Class-A toxin Sodium mono fluroacetate is highly poisonous. This poison is mainly used to eradicate possums and other pests, but mainly it ends up killing the other wild life, like the kea, kiwis, deer, and even fruit bats. That’s why I say that we should stop using 1080. The brush tail possum was first introduced to New Zealand between 1837 and the 1920’s to establish a fur trade. But with little or no predators the possum quickly spread throughout New Zealand and now they cover over 95% of New Zealand’s land mass plus some off shore islands. One farmer says that three months after D.O.C did a fly-by poison drop on his farm and declared it “possum free” he hired a professional possum trapper and caught 98 possums, not counting 50 joeys in pouches, 140 bush rats and a ferret in eight days. Another example why the Department of Conservation should stop using it is that it nearly killed a whole colony of fruit bats in one night. These bats were under protection so that they would get back to a comfortable population in the central north island. This poison is cruel in the fact that it is a slow killer. It is dangerous to humans if contaminated water is drunk; one woman says that she even got supraventricular tachicardia which are extremely frightening cardiac irregularities.  The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (N.Z.F.S.A.) says that people would need to eat at least 100g of the carrot baits. As all 1080 spiked carrots are dyed bright green so that they cannot be mistaken for normal carrots. Or drink over 5000 litres of water, in one sitting, from a waterway directly contaminated by a poison drop. Or eat at least 37kg of meat, in one sitting, from a sheep that died of 1080 poisoning. This equates to the meat from about 2.5 average-sized sheep. 1080 isn’t manufactured in New Zealand, it is manufactured in the US, and New Zealand uses 85-95% of the poison in the world. Possums can carry TB (or Tuberculosis), Giardia and Cryptosporidium so there is a need to get rid of them, another reason is that they eat thousands of tonnes of native brush each night. An alternative to using poisons like1080 and cyanide is trapping or hunting but a very small number are shot every year. Other methods of excluding possums from one area are to put metal sleeves on trees, chemical repellents or fences specially designed, these do not kill possums but exclude them from one area. I don’t get why they don’t jut use these methods to bunch them all into one area and just do a big cull. Don’t you think that it is weird that a DOC worker took down some spouting that led to his water tank three days before a DOC 1080 poison drop. In conclusion I think that the Department Of Conservation should stop using 1080 be cause of the health risk to humans and the danger to New Zealand’s native wildlife.