It seems there's no nutters like the anti-1080 nutters. When dogs started dying on Auckland's North Shore beaches they clogged the talkback radio lines. The culprit turned out to be a sea slug, but that didn't stop them. Stirred up by a deerstalkers' film doing the rounds that makes exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims about 1080's effect on wildlife and waterways, these nutters are becoming a serious threat to our society reports The Dom Post. That's because they are beginning to be taken seriously by people who should know better. One such group is the Taupo District Council which in a 6-to- 4 vote has decided to call for the abolition of the aerial dropping of 1080. Why this should be any business of the council, I have no idea. It has no say over the use of 1080 - that's up to the regional council. I suppose it can make submissions next time the regional council applies for a resource consent for an aerial drop but if it voices the opinions of the anti- 1080 lobby it will be laughed out of the hearing. Unfortunately, the Taupo council is not content to leave it there. It wants to spread the word to other towns around the country. I would hope these councils would show more sense and listen carefully to the science-backed facts of the users of 1080 - the Animal Health Board and the Conservation Department. To my mind the issue is clear- cut. Do we want our forests and bush to be free of possums or not? The possums are carriers of tuberculosis, which they pass on to wild deer and farmed cattle and deer. These are animals that generate $8 billion a year for the economy and contribute to our standard of living. Possums also ravage our native flora and bird life, destroying young growth, stealing food from the birds and plundering their nests. The only way to be sure we get them all is with aerial drops of 1080. Trapping will get many, but to equal the effectiveness of a 1080 drop the traps would have to be placed every 100 metres and would have to be regularly refreshed, even in the most rugged, steep and bush-clad gullies - extremely unlikely, I'd say.
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