Let’s save New Zealand’s insects by stopping use of pesticides

THANK YOU Bruce Munro for your welcome interview with renowned entomologist Anthony Harris, titled ‘‘Losing the buzz’’ (ODT, 16.6.18).

It will be a wakeup call for some, but for many of us the insect decline has been so obvious for many years.

Why something has not been actioned to halt the practices used that have caused this decline beggars belief.

All my gardens, over the years, ranging from small to three acres, have been maintained as healthy ecosystems.

I have never used pesticides, even in my work in nativetree reserves over 30 years.

I am a hand weeder which also makes me an observer of the natural world. Action speaks louder than words. All of us can create flourishing ecosystems in our gardens regardless of size or type.

Perhaps government research entomologists can put the buzz back in our insect world by activating a New Zealandwide programme to restore insect environments?

Maggie Feringa Rakiura/Stewart Island

[Abridged]

More 1080 meetings?

YOUR story (ODT, 27.6.18) regarding the deletion of video footage where Ospri staff walked out of a public meeting in Wanaka because of fears for their safety reinforces my theory they did not want to face awkward or unanswerable questions on the aerial poisoning of 2000 hectares near Luggate with 1080, classified as one of the world’s top 10 super toxins.

Nick Hancox’s excuse for the deletion of video footage because of privacy and personal information doesn’t cut the mustard with me. The private and personal material could have been easily edited out and footage of the threatening behaviour made to staff kept and given to police, and arrests made, to deter any future threats made to Ospri staff at any other public meetings.

Maybe Annette Grieve can tell me and many other interested people that the ‘‘isolated pockets of conservation (public) lands that do not have public foot access’’ she refers to are able to be accessed by the public using helicopters? Lewis Hore

Oamaru