Environment And Health At Risk
1080 is, I am sure, threatening our health, the health of animals, and also the very birds it is meant to be protecting. It is getting into our waterways, which will kill fish and the life which fish are dependent on for food. This contaminated drinking water will be a danger to our own health too. As well as 1080, we have toxic herbicides, such as glyphosate in RoundUp, being sprayed vociferously about the country roads and city parks and reserves. These poisons also end up in the waterways and affect our health.
Today is Sunday, 29th October, 2017. I live nearby the Kaikorai Valley Reserve, in Dunedin. My house is about 15 metres from the reserve. Yesterday, I saw a dead duck lying in a drain by the roadway which runs alongside the Kaikorai Reserve. The day before that, on Friday, I saw a dead seagull lying on the grass in the park adjacent to the Kaikorai Valley Reserve. I wonder if 1080 is the cause of these birds dying, and the cause of sudden debilitation in health recently.
It is interesting to me that the Kaikorai Reserve has been closed off to the public for quite a few weeks now. No sign was up, but some orange netting has been blocking the entranceway. I also find it interesting that during this time, a neighbour of mine who lives even closer to the reserve than me, had an emergency visit to hospital. He said he felt ill and had a very flushed face. But no heart pain. The hospital told him he was having a heart attack, and put a stent into his heart while he was there. Perhaps he did have a weak heart, but his condition would have undoubtedly been made worse by what I suspect was 1080 next door.
Earlier this year, sometime in January, I came across a kereru – native wood pigeon – which had died on the footpath, only 30 yards or so up from the entrance to the Kaikorai walkway. It was still fresh, and a wild cat was eating out the flesh of the belly. It is possible that the feral cat had killed the pigeon as it sat above on the overhanging branch of a tree, but it is also possible that this bird had been poisoned by 1080 before the cat got to it.
About three years ago, in Te Aroha, I walked with a friend a good way up Te Aroha mountain, which is in the Waikato. A notice was at the bottom of the hill, announcing that 1080 had been dropped, and this advised that one should not take a dog into the area. We got half way up the mountain in complete silence. Not one bird to be seen, and not one bird sound. We were about an hour or two doing the walk, and no birds were to be seen the whole time.
My neighbour tells me that the council have been dropping a lot of 1080 around Dunedin’s parks and reserves. All I can find about recent 1080 drops around Dunedin is this article:
Silverstream Pest Control – Dunedin City Council
Aug 17, 2017 – The Dunedin City Council has agreed to a request from OSPRI to undertake a pest control operation using 1080 on council land in the …
On the 10th October, 2017, which I remember well, because it was my grandson’s birthday, we all felt ill at my family’s house. They live at Sawyer’s Bay, which has a good-size reserve and water-catchment area at the top of the hill. I suspect that the cause of their sickness was because the 1080 pesticide was dropped here too.
On the previous Saturday, 7th October, 2017, I had felt so ill I was having doubts about going to the birthday party, thinking I might have to have a visit to hospital for life support. That day my neighbour’s cat, a very healthy, young, gregarious male, vomitted up his food at my house. He did the same thing on the following day, and again, vomitted up his food on the third day in a row. He has never ever been ill during the time I have been here – 1 1/2 years. He was ill at the very same time, on the very same days when I felt sudden nausea and thought I would collapse because of some unknown toxic poisoning. My daughter and my grandson were also feeling very ill at the same time.
Earlier in the year, on New Year’s Eve, I had a similar experience of weakness which was combined with memory loss. I had seen workers spraying herbicide along the motorway as I travelled on the bus to Mosgiel and back. On that occasion, my neighbour called the ambulance to take me to hospital. Many tests were done, and they declared that nothing was wrong with me physically. A brain scan was done also, and that showed nothing wrong other than the slight deterioration which comes with age. After this sudden episode of debilitation, I discovered that all the country roads in the surrounding district had been sprayed with toxic herbicide. I assumed it was RoundUp, which the World Health Organization now suspect as a major cause of cancer, but I think the council’s contractors have changed the type of spray being used. It is no better for the health, though, than the more common RoundUp.
1080 is yet another poison which is being used widely in our environment, to the detriment of health of all living creatures. Many of my friends and school-mates have died in recent years, mostly of cancer, before reaching 65. Life expectancy is lessening in New Zealand for even well-off people, mainly because of the poisons in our air, food and water.