Risible–But They Still Know Best

Zero Risk and Fourteen Tonnes of Trout

And now, a story which will resonate with all readers from around the world who have experienced the scintillating skills of bureaucrats at the top of their game.  

New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world to deploy the poison 1080 in an effort to control noxious pests (possums, stoats, weasels, rats–and so forth).  Whenever it is deployed in a vast industrial scale there are worries about it getting into the food chain.

At such times, not infrequently, the local bureaucrats and government functionaries get caught like the hapless possum in car headlights.  Then they proceed to talk out of both sides of their mouths so volubly that one suspects they have two, even three, tongues.  Here is the latest show from the travelling circus, coming to a neighbourhood near you:

The Department of Conservation [“DoC”] is warning anglers not to eat trout in areas where 1080 poison has been dropped – a reversal of its position seven months ago.  The caution comes just days before the trout fishing season opens on October 1. [NZ Herald]

So, what confronts us ordinary rubes here is a position reversal–a well known move favoured by bureaucrats under pressure.  What’s the problem?
  Well, imagine a mouse terminated by eating aerial dropped 1080 poison pellets.  Imagine, further, that said mouse got washed into a waterway, and was eaten by a hungry trout.  At that point, the flesh of the trout would contain levels of the 1080 poison that were beyond tolerable limits as defined by the NZ Food Safety Authority.

Now comes the risible double tongued bureaucratic-speak:

Yesterday, DoC advised anglers to take a “zero risk” approach and not eat fish from catchments where 1080 had been dropped.

Zero risk, eh.  Now we are approaching sacred mountain territory.  The gummint wants a society, apparently, in which there is zero risk. Let’s apply that to crossing the street, shall we?  Zero risk would be never to cross the street. Ever. Yup, that’s zero risk all right.

But the department said the risk to human health was extremely low.  “Researchers calculated that at these levels, an 80kg adult would need to eat more than 14 tonnes of trout flesh in one serving to have a 50 per cent chance of receiving a fatal dose.” [Emphasis, ours.]

Fourteen tonnes of trout in one serving to have half a chance of dying from 1080.  Don’t worry, mate.  The belly would have exploded long before 1080 poisoning could have taken hold.

Behold, the slavering forked tongue of the bureaucrat-possum in the headlights.  No problem eating a trout which has, in turn, eaten a poisoned mouse.  But, zero risk says there may, possibly, just be a teensie weensie problem–so don’t eat the trout.  But, the hapless bureaucratic possum hastens to add, in order for there to be a problem, you would need to eat 14 tonnes of trout flesh at one sitting–all fourteen tonnes, presumably, infected with 1080 poisoning. So, no problem at all.  But there might be.  But not really.  Don’t eat trout.  Best advice.  Ever. 

Bryce Johnson of Fish and Game said he thought DoC had played down the issue in its statement.  “They commissioned the research. If they’re saying take a zero-risk approach, and in the next breath saying you’ve got to eat 14 tonnes of trout flesh, it makes a mockery of their own advice.”

You don’t say.  Either way, we suspect the bureaucrats are not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  They are engaged in a butt covering exercise.  Risk-reduction requires us to be intensely sceptical in such cases.  Zero-risk would mean never listening to them.  Ever.

Cutting Costs

Governance in the National Parks

The largest landowner in New Zealand by far is the government.  Nearly thirty percent of land area in the country is administered by the Department of Conservation (“DOC”).  To be fair, a large proportion of this land is rugged, beautiful mountain ranges which are virtually inhabitable.  National parks are open to the public, provided they keep the rules, most of which are eminently sensible and life protecting. 

Lying behind DOC are the environmental advocacy groups, the most powerful and influential of which is the NZ Forest and Bird Society.  For a number of years DOC operational policies in the national parks has effectively been written and sometimes executed by NZ Forest and Bird.  The influence of perverse environmentalist extremism has too often apparent.  One example is the use of 1080 poison to control, if not eradicate, possums–an introduced species lacking natural predators.
  Possums multiply rapidly and consume lots of greenery, threatening forests.  Aerial drops of 1080 are carried out by central and local government with the strong support of NZ Forest and Bird.  Sadly, it seems that birds are all that matter to this organization and the devastation wrought upon other species is regarded as acceptable collateral damage. 

Another example of foolish extremism is antipathy to human beings.  Human beings are seen as environmentally destructive simply by virtue of being in, or traversing across, wilderness areas.  To these folk the mere presence of humans means environmental degradation and destruction of one sort or other.  We have hunted deer over the years in the Tararua Ranges, north of Wellington.  DOC has been systematically removing wood burning stoves and heaters from huts on the grounds that burning wood is environmentally destructive.  Better to have the occupants of the huts freeze to death.  In recent years this asinine policy seems to have been ameoliorated.  DOC now transports firewood into some huts. 

Like most government departments in New Zealand, DOC is under budget constraints.  It is laying off staff.  NZ Forest and Bird is not happy. 

More than 100 staff at the Department of Conservation are expected to lose their jobs this week.  The department will discuss its latest restructuring plan with staff tomorrow.  Restructuring last year led to the loss of about 120 staff.  Forest & Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell said the latest cuts are expected to be significant, with frontline conservation staff to be laid off in favour of recruiting volunteers.

There are plenty of potential volunteers available with lots of energy and a genuine love for the back country and its preservation.  Tramping clubs, fishing clubs, and hunting groups spring to mind–but these are not the kind of volunteers which NZ Forest and Bird appreciate.  Often times they are seen as part of the problem, part of the threat to maintaining a wilderness–the real environmental nirvana for the extremists.  

Co-operative co-management with interested private groups seems a much better approach.  Also it will be less costly to the tax payer.  It is great to see some examples of government retrenchment and a substitution of its overreach by a range of interest groups and volunteers who are even more committed to reasonable and rational preservation of national parks.

>The S-Files

>Poisonous Brew’s the Tool, Wherein We’ll Play the Stupid Fool

Contra Celsum nominates the Department of Conservation for an S-Award

The Department of Conservation (“DOC”) stubbornly continues to drop vast tonnages of the poison 1080 into New Zealand’s forests and waterways. It recently was exposed as being responsible for killing rare and protected birds as a consequence of its malfeasance.

Citation:

The Department of Conservation, believed by many to be the enforcement and execution arm of the NZ Forest and Bird Society, was recently responsible for the deaths of seven kea, killed by one of DOC’s infamous aerial 1080 poison scatterings.

The kea is a native parrot that is both endangered and protected. A recent DOC aerial 1080 drop in the area of the Fox Glacier killed about half of a kea population being monitored by DOC. This catastrophe of collateral damage has caused yet another review of the policy of scattering the virulent poison 1080 over the countryside in vast quantities.

The review has produced a draft report stating that 1080 drops have probably been devastating to some populations of kea.

New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world to use 1080 poison. We deploy almost the entire world’s production of the poison into our forests and waterways very year. The aerial dropping of 1080 is a bureaucratic, but very crude and primitive, plan to combat possums, stoats, and weasels which cause so much damage to flora and fauna.

The collateral damage from the aerial poison drops is extensive, but details and knowledge effectively suppressed. Deer, dogs, and every other mammal have been damaged by this non-targeted, broad brush, crude approach to possum control. The deathly impact upon bird life is unknown, although anecdotal evidence is considerable. Waterways have been persistently exposed to the poison.

Every so often an “incident” occurs which reaches the media, such as the death of the seven keas. If we, as individuals, killed a kea we would be liable to prosecution and punishment. But government-caused-collateral-damage-deaths are another matter. They are legitimatised by being part of a larger, higher cause.

We do not doubt the deleterious effects of possums. We do not doubt that poisons are an effective means of control. We completely reject, however, the crude, broad-brush methods of DOC which end up scattering the deadly poison far and wide, resulting in enormous actual and potential damage to other species.

Possums, weasels and stoats need to be exposed to appropriate poisons using bait stations that only those animals can access, where collateral damage is kept to an absolute minimum, and the poison is prevented from getting into the waterways. DOC needs to lay aside its crude blunderbus and start putting in the hard yards.

Department of Conservation: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied