OPINION: The average peace-loving New Zealander may not be aware of it but, apparently, we are at war.
If you find this difficult to comprehend, and a little frightening, for verification you need go no further than listen to the war-like rhetoric emanating from people at Predator Free-2050.
This new, but generously funded, movement has a clear mission: To be rid of all predators, (whatever or whoever they may be), by the year 2050, with its website calling us to arms urging us to ‘unite to fight’.
In an interview last year Sir Rob Fenwick, chairman of Predator Free NZ trust used dialogue such as the ‘threat of invasion is here’ but that “we have an army of tens of thousands of New Zealanders” to undertake ‘a military campaign to push the invaders back, just as we did in the last two world wars’.
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This talk exemplifies a dangerous path down which we are being led which could result in an ecological disaster because of this new-found obsession to become predator free.
In a recently published paper two eminent ecologists, Professor Wayne Linklater and Dr Jamie Steer, are critical of the methodology being employed: ‘While Predator Free-2050 is well intentioned’, they concluded, ‘New Zealand’s future conservation policies need to be less bombastic, and better informed by the environmental, ecological and social sciences’.
In a separate interview Linklater went further when he stated that New Zealanders would regard being ‘cruelty free’ a far greater goal than ‘predator free’, an aspiration with which I totally concur.
Not surprisingly the troops being deployed to free us of all these predators is the Department of Conservation, (DoC), who of course are willing and able to do the job.
In my naivety I used to believe that conservation meant preserving our special and unique biodiversity.
There are many dedicated individuals employed by DoC who labour long and hard to preserve the lives of many of our endangered species.
Dr Arian Wallach of the University of Technology, Sydney, and Fellow of the Charles Darwin University, described the essence of conservation succinctly when she stated: ‘The aim of conservation is not to generate an ever increasing (dead) body count, but to guide human behaviours to enable the rest of the earth’s species to flourish’.
The major weapon in DoC’s vast armoury, and akin to the H-bomb, is sodium fluoroacetate, (1080), a cheap and particularly nasty pesticide which is as indiscriminate in whom it targets as it is efficient in killing them.
Registered as the most toxic pesticide by the World Health Organisation it was the only chemical weapon reportedly found in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. 1080 is outlawed in a large number of countries, but to our absolute shame New Zealand has been using it since it was first trialled here in 1954.
Despite growing public abhorrence, we are now purchasing 80% of the total supply, making us by far the largest user in the world.
So just who are these invaders that, as Predator Free-2050 advocates, need this military effort to defeat ‘because it is a very insidious war they have waged’ against us’?
The irony is that these so-called invading species have no ability or desire to declare war, or any concept of what is being plotted against them, or why, neither have they the ability to protect themselves or fight back. In fact it’s a bit of a one-sided war, rather more a premeditated annihilation I would suggest.
In reality the selection of predators that need to be killed is at the behest of the greatest predator of them all, humans, either because we just don’t like them, or they are introduced species and not native to our shores, or we have the mistaken belief that if we exterminate them our biodiversity will be rescued from certain peril. In general the reasons are unscientific and immoral, as are the weapons used against them.
Unbelievably cats are the latest animal to be selected as a targeted predator which will astound and horrify most people, but will delight rats, and Gareth Morgan.
In an incredulous move the current Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage, wants to see Kiwi wandering the urban gardens of Wellington, which would not exactly be their choice of where they would wish to reside given the human dangers associated with urban living, and their lack of natural bush protection to which they are accustomed.
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The Minister noted that to achieve this urban dream cats would have to go, parroting the demands of the insidious ‘cats to go’ campaign, requiring ‘having cats inside, and when your cat dies then not replacing it’. So it’s cats or kiwis.
Just recently the small Southland town of Omaui hit international headlines by taking their dislike of cats to the extreme and demanding a total ban on all cats, including much loved companion cats – their likelihood of success is hopefully remote.
However, Local and Regional Councils throughout New Zealand, who have never before shown any interest in cats, are now wanting to illegally label them as ‘pest cats’ so they can be destroyed without question, again acceding to Morgan’s dictate that ‘any cat that is free to range should be a dead cat’.
The persecution of cats, the country’s most popular and adored companion animal, is as unfathomable as it is without foundation. Ecologist Gary J Patonec, (USA), commented: ‘What I find inconsistent in an otherwise scientific debate about biodiversity is how the indictment of cats has been pursued in spite of the evidence’.
French ornithologist Jean Dorst conveys some sobering and relevant words of wisdom: ‘Whatever the metaphysical position is adopted and whatever place is given to the human species, man has no right to destroy a species of plant or animal on the pretext that it is useless. We have no right to exterminate what we have not created’.
I have no hesitation in adding my heartfelt support to that sentiment, as my dream for our country has always been that we respect and love all life, and that humans, animals and the environment can coexist in harmony. I also have the belief that if it is our earnest hope we can realise that dream. Keep believing.
Bob Kerridge has had a long and distinguished professional career in animal welfare.
