Lead buckshot is polluting NZ’s back country

PLASTIC is now regarded as a major environmental and conservation threat.

Just recently the Department of Conservation carried out a tahr cull in the Mt Cook region, killing between 2700 and 3000 animals — left to die, rot and waste.

I assume as they have done for many years on feral animal culls, shotguns using lead buckshot would have been used.

An estimate of 4500 rounds would have been used on this cull — that’s 4500 plastic shells and 4500 plastic wads and about 200kg of lead in one searchanddestroy mission, dumped in the wilderness environment.

In some areas where these culls take place, the shells and wads would end up in streams and rivers and eventually the sea — not to mention the many dead animals finding their way into pristine mountain streams and rotting.

According to Doc and the Kea Conservation Trust, lead is poisoning kea, with leadhead nails on hut roofs and wheel weights on car tyres killing them. But the leadhead nails on numerous mountain hut roofs have been there for decades and kea were abundant during those decades until the last 20 or so years. So lead nails seems wrongly blamed and so would tyre wheel weights, except possibly on three highway mountain passes.

But lead buckshot used on wild animals is widespread. Not only does the plastic pollute the environment but it’s likely the endangered, inquisitive kea would find the plastic novel to swallow — plus the lead shot used.

An Xray of a kea shown at a trust meeting I attended showed lead particles in its stomach.

Is Doc guilty? Lewis Hore

Oamaru

Defensive, not dithery

INSTEAD of calling careful and considerate drivers ‘‘dithery’’, perhaps Tom Moore (9.7.18) should go to a course to update his knowledge of the Road Code

And then on to one on defensive driving. J. Park

Wakari