Poisons Policy

Our Vision: We want to create a country where we are admired by the world not just because of our wonderful natural environment, but because of the way we live. A way of life that protects and enhances that environment.

Our policy on 1080 and other vertebrate toxins

The NZ Outdoors Party policy is “immediate ban use of 1080 and
brodifacoum poisons” and any other poisons that cause secondary or tertiary poisoning.

Once these secondary and tertiary poisons are in the environment, we have no control over where they go and the damage they do. There are not enough ecological studies to show what is happening in the environment after poison operations. Brodifacoum is now known to be destroying our once thriving ruru populations due to secondary poisoning. We can do so much better and safer for everyone and everything.

Who are “Big Poison” in New Zealand?

The three main public users are:
– Department of Conservation who use poisons to poison rats, mice and
possums.
– OSPRI who seek to eradicate possums as a suspected vector for
spreading bovine tuberculosis.
– Regional Councils to control unwanted mammals including rabbits, possums, rats, mice, cats and wallabies on Council and privately owned land.
Some of these organisations, deliberately or otherwise, also use toxins to poison feral deer, goats, pigs and other game animals.

1080 – more harm than benefit?

The aerial and other use of brodifacoum and 1080 is a contentious subject. Some claim that without it rodents and mustelids (stoats, ferrets and weasels), would annihilate our bird populations.

However these poisons are cruel, indiscriminate, and directly and indirectly kill many native birds, deer and pigs and contaminate the foodchain, creating an avoidable environmental and economic risk. Neither 1080 nor brodifacoum can lawfully be used to target stoats or ferrets.
Some research has been undertaken on “efficient” use of 1080, but there is little research on the toxicity or fate of breakdown products, effect of long-term sub-lethal doses, teratogenic effects (foetal impact) or hormone interference to plants and animals, including humans or on the effect of poisons interfering with natural ecological balances.
Nor is there any research on the risk from cereals in baits of unknown source and quality spreading spores, myco-toxins and other pesticides, or the cumulative effect of these on ecosystems.

1080 – The War On Nature

NZ has been dropping millions of tonnes of toxins across our land for sixty years. This approach is not working. We still have “pests” and rat plagues have become more common. DOC is aware that 1080 poison operations kill our birds – kea, kiwi, takahe and more – as well as invertebrates that the birds need to survive, and yet they continue.

The NZ Outdoors Party believes that landscape scale use of poisons is not a
sustainable solution, has no social licence, and has created an unwinnable “war on nature”. The Outdoors Party encourages healthy ecosystems and communities, community access to deer and other wild foods, the utilisation of possums for fur and other niche enterprises and more targeted community led pest management.

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Alan Simmons

Alan Simmons

President & Co-Leader Alan has dedicated a lifetime of involvement in outdoors political issues. He’s sat on a number of national body executives, boards, NGO and management groups, including the NZ Professional Hunting Guides Association, Electricorp Environmental Management Board, NZ Federation of Freshwater Anglers and the NZ Professional Fishing Guides Association. Many will know him through his website, the hugely popular New Zealand FishnHunt forum.

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