This policy and associated papers are copyright. NZ Outdoors Party. 23rd Feb, 2025
Poisons Policy
The NZ Outdoors Party policy is “immediate ban use of 1080 and brodifacoum poisons” and any other poisons that cause secondary or tertiary poisoning.
Our policy on 1080 and other vertebrate toxins
Once these secondary and tertiary poisons are in the environment, we have no control over where they go and the damage they do. There are not enough ecological studies to show what is happening in the environment after poison operations. Brodifacoum is now known to be destroying our once thriving Ruru populations due to secondary poisoning. We can do so much better and safer for everyone and everything.
1080 – more harm than benefit?
The aerial and other use of brodifacoum and 1080 is a contentious subject. Some claim that without it rodents and mustelids (stoats, ferrets and weasels), would annihilate our bird populations.
However, these poisons are cruel, indiscriminate, and directly and indirectly kill many native birds, deer and pigs and contaminate the food chain, creating an avoidable environmental and economic risk. Neither 1080 nor brodifacoum can lawfully be used to target stoats or ferrets.
Some research has been undertaken on “efficient” use of 1080, but there is little research on the toxicity or fate of breakdown products, effect of long-term sub-lethal doses, teratogenic effects (foetal impact) or hormone interference to plants and animals, including humans or on the effect of poisons interfering with natural ecological balances.
Nor is there any research on the risk from cereals in baits of unknown source and quality spreading spores, myco-toxins and other pesticides, or the cumulative effect of these on ecosystems.
Image of squashed cockroach full of brodifacoum which killed 4 rare and prehistoric Tuatara in a zoo
Who are “Big Poison” in New Zealand?
The three main public users are:
– Department of Conservation who use poisons to poison rats, mice and
possums.
– OSPRI who seek to eradicate possums as a suspected vector for
spreading bovine tuberculosis.
– Regional Councils to control unwanted mammals including rabbits, possums, rats, mice, cats and wallabies on Council and privately owned land.
Some of these organisations, deliberately or otherwise, also use toxins to poison feral deer, goats, pigs and other game animals.
