Protect The NZ Hedgehog From Poisoning

The humble hedgehog is the gardener’s best friend. They will chew up dozens of snails and slugs as they go about their wanderings of a night. They make the use of poisonous slug pellets unnecessary, which is a good thing, as slug pellets are very toxic things and will poison not only the slugs in your garden, but also hedgehogs and birds which might eat the slugs. Slug pellets could also possibly affect the person distributing the poison, and eventually, the slug poison will reach waterways, contributing to the chemical hazards of our environment.
In my experience, commercial slug pellets are hazardous to the health: even a neighbour’s slug poison will affect sensitive people, as the vapours, which are emitted for weeks after laying on the ground, and which are deleterious to the immune system, will drift on the air. These fumes have a very corrosive action on the nervous system and will give you candida type illnesses.
I recently saw an article in a local Dunedin newspaper which was promoting the trapping of hedgehogs, with bait and traps being provided. “Do your bit for the community – put a trap down to help eradicate hedgehogs’ was the message.
My guess is that something like 1080, or brodifacoum, is in the bait.
Since reading that article about a month ago, which encouraged householders to get on board with the campaign to eradicate hedgehogs, a friend in Sawyer’s Bay, Port Chalmers, has found several dead hedgehogs in her garden. This is the first time since they moved there, 6-7 years ago, that she has found dead hedgehogs in her garden. My friend’s garden is an organic paradise, friend to hedgehogs and birds alike.
Where does this desire to kill harmless creatures come from? New Zealand does have a culture of violence and abuse which ranges down the whole social system, and over-reaches onto environment issues. The old pioneering ‘die-hard’ attitude makes New Zealand an easy target for pesticide companies to manipulate us as a nation into boosting their sales. Much advertising money is spent ensuring that government agencies, and others such as Forest and Bird Society, swallow the bait and support pest eradication campaigns engineered by these big profiteers, the chemical giants. For years now, Forest and Bird Society have supported the 1080 and brodifacoum poisoning of parks and forests nationwide, something which I find very bewildering, since these chemicals are KNOWN to kill the very birds they endeavour to protect. The poison gets into our waterways, which is another problem, as then fish get contaminated too.
A couple of years ago, after 1080 warnings came that parks and reserves were to be ‘treated’ with 1080 in my area, I found within the week, one dead seagull and one dead duck on the rugby field near the reserve, and a wood pigeon dead just up and road, 100 yards away. When I walked up Te Aroha mountain 4-5 years ago, there was not one bird to be seen or heard. We were warned at the bottom of the walk that 1080 had been distributed. All was still and silent.
And now, these chemical giants, through the support of government agencies, are brain-washing the public into believing that they are helping their communities by laying poison, supplied by the authorities, to kill pests, even hedgehogs, in their own gardens.
One rationale given by NZ environment ‘authorities’ is that hedgehogs eat kiwi eggs, which is why we should kill all hedgehogs, they say. But seriously, where can you find a kiwi egg around cities and towns, or even in the country? I have never ever seen a kiwi in the bush. Massey University say that dogs are the worst threat to kiwi. But do we then eradicate all dogs because of the kiwi cause? How ridiculous is that?
Sure, hedgehogs could be baited near sanctuaries such as the Orokanui Reserve in Dunedin, which would protect any kiwi living there. They do that anyway, with special pest-proof fences and the like. But it is surely not necessary to kill all hedgehogs all over New Zealand?
Now that glyphosate products such as RoundUp are on the way out, having been proven to be cancer-causing, the chemical giants are looking to hook the public into a new devious scheme. After all, they have been advertising glyphosate-RoundUp for 30 years or more as a ‘biodegradable’ product, something which was proven to be a lie. In a court case 2-3 years ago, Monsanto was ordered to remove the biodegradable claim from all their packaging and marketing.
Meanwhile, all the farmers I know argued with me, convinced that RoundUp was perfectly safe, because they believed Monsanto’s claim. I always knew this herbicide was very toxic, as it affected me badly when I came into contact with it, or smelt it after it had been sprayed. Candida sickness was always the result, with dizziness, poor memory, bone pains, blurry vision, and other symptoms. So – 30 years ago, I was arguing the point to no avail about glyphosate-RoundUp being hazardous to the health.
And yet, even now, despite many countries having banned glyphosate, in New Zealand we STILL have to put up with RoundUp or similar herbicides being widely sprayed on agriculture land, on almost all roadsides, all over the railway system, and around parks and reserves.
Bees have been very scarce this year. On an average day, I might see one or two bees in my garden. There was just one day when I counted around 30 bees. But then, they disappeared. Herbicides such as glyphosate, still being used in NZ, is a bee-killer as well as a weedkiller. ( Microwaves from cell-phone towers and other transmitters are also hazardous to bees and all living creatures – we should beware of smart meters on electricity boxes, cell-phone transmitters, and certainly, the new 5G roll-out coming soon)
I witnessed, about 8 weeks ago, a group of young men in a marshy area just south of Palmerston, spraying what was probably RoundUp all over the marsh, which is connected to the estuary. No poison, glyphosate-RoundUp, or anything else, should ever be put near waterways, and certainly not actually IN them.
It is surely time to ban all toxic herbicides, pesticides and insecticides. We are a now a dying planet and should be respecting and caring for all forms of life.