Social media poisoning minds with shonky opinions
If you believe their propaganda, anti-1080 activists claim that the poison kills thousands of native birds and threatens their survival. They say the poison does more damage than the possums.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Repeated surveys before and after 1080 drops show the poison has trivial or no effect on bird populations and that the birds usually flourish after control operations. One method for measuring the effects of 1080 on birds is to make five-minute counts of their numbers before and after possum control operations.
Thousands of counts were made over two years before and after a poison drop on Auckland’s Rangitoto Island. The populations of tui, waxeyes, chaffinches and hawks all shot up.
Another method for measuring the effects of 1080 is to attach coloured leg bands to large numbers of birds and count how many survive the bombardment. In the Pureora Forest near Te Kuiti, 47 kokako were leg-banded before several 1080 drops. All survived the control operations.
Yet another method is to radio- tag birds and follow their fates. In this way, 32 kiwi radio tagged in Tongariro Forest all survived a 1080 poison drop.
Again in Pureora Forest, 81 kiwi, 57 kaka, 52 weka, 19 whio, 15 kereru and seven moreporks were radio-tagged before poison drops. All but two survived.
Simply counting dead birds on the forest floor can be illuminating.
Landcare scientists Grant Morris, Graham Nugent, Jackie Whitford and others analysed the results of 987 days searching for dead birds after 19 aerial poisoning operations in the North and South islands. Of native birds they found only eight dead pigeons, two dead tomtits and one dead tui.
Collectively, these and many other surveys show that aerial 1080 poisoning operations have a trivial or negligible effect on native bird populations. Possums, rats, and stoats present a far greater threat to the birds.
Well, this is how scientists see the situation anyway.
The anti-1080 cabal don’t see it that way. Many of them claim that cruel, pig-headed, self-serving bureaucrats are wreaking a holocaust on the New Zealand ecosystem, killing all creatures in the country that breathe air, that the poison is more damaging than the animals it is supposed to control, and that 1080 poisons our drinking water.
You’ll find all this repeated a thousand times on social media – a farrago of exaggeration, misrepresentation, conspiracy theories, fearmongering and chemophobia (aided and abetted by the Graf Boys festival-winning but utterly misleading movie Poisoning Paradise: Ecocide New Zealand. Tens of thousands of tests have failed to find significant traces of 1080 in our drinking water).
Social media is where the Fly Fishing Forum, some iwi and regional councils, animal rightists, Farmers Against 1080, Poison Free NZ and the Ban 1080 political party get their information and where they get their hostile inspiration.
Scientists despair of social media. Over many years we sweat blood and tears uncovering or ascertaining facts, but reality makes no headway against the torrent of unchecked, lopsided, shonky opinion swamping our screens.