1080 Reassessment Completed by ERMA Patricia Whiting-OKeefe, BS, PhD and Quinn Whiting-OKeefe, BA, MA, MD

 The NZ Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) issued its report on its reassessment of DoC and AHB’s use of the controversial poison, 1080 this past Tuesday. The report approved the continued use of 1080 with some superficial tightening of controls over aerial 1080 operations.

In general the ERMA report represents the same kind of cognitive disconnect from the known facts and scientific evidence that was evident in the DoC/AHB submission. Indeed, the degree of distortion and misrepresentation compares favourably with the Bush administration’s denial of global warming and the conclusions are almost equally at odds with the evidence.

For example, ERMA states in their report that 1080 is “less lethal to humans than is cyanide”. In fact, 1080 is equally as toxic as cyanide, but there is no antidote and no effective palliative treatment. 1080 is acutely toxic to everything that breaths air from earth worms to kiwis to humans.

It is classified as “1A, extremely hazardous” by the United Nations. In most countries it is entirely banned and severely restricted in others. It is particularly toxic to human beings requiring less than 100 mg to kill an adult.

This means that DoC is indiscriminately dumping enough 1080 into our forests to kill 25,000,000 people every year. Perhaps worse, ERMA denigrates the potential for unanticipated long term effects on humans and native animals in a way that echoes the tone that we heard for decades regarding dioxin and DDT. ERMA agrees that 1080 kills birds, but asserts that “this impact is minimal and has short term effect on the population”.

This claim entirely ignores DoC’s own scientific research. Impact is not minimal but rather is extensive, 50% to 100% of some species being killed in a single drop in some studies, and populations have not been shown to recover following mass killings.

There is not a single credible study showing a population benefit from aerial 1080 drops to any native species. The studies cited by DoC and echoed by ERMA simply don’t show what DoC claims that they show. Indeed, there are no long term studies of the effect of aerial 1080 on any species, and certainly none on whole ecosystems. ERMA claims that 1080 results in net benefit (the bottom line) because the “native ecosystem is protected”.

We found numerous studies showing considerable mortality in native species. No studies have been done that found that populations ever really recovered. However, more to the point, there is not a single forest ecosystem level study of the effect of 1080. ERMA asserts that “no long term effects appear to have been identified with regard to invertebrates”, and it considered “the effects of 1080 on insect populations to be minor and localized”.

The reason for that is clear: no one has looked. There is no evidence regarding chronic effects on invertebrates. None, zero, nada, nichts. When ERMA made the above statement they must not have recalled the old scientific adage: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

What we do know about invertebrates is that a single aerial 1080 drop kills from 50 to 100% of invertebrates (including beetles, spiders, flies and many others), as one would expect for a substance that was introduced as an insecticide (but later outlawed in Britain because it was “too broad spectrum”).

We also know that DoC attempted to suppress the 1992 paper that documented this invertebrate devastation in our forests. The ERMA committee “found no evidence of native bats being harmed by 1080”. This is truly extraordinary given that the only credible scientific study on the subject made a “best estimate” that there was a 14.4% bat mortality in 14 days after an aerial 1080 drop.

This was a technically firstrate, short term study reported without bias, but could not rationally be construed to indicate “no evidence” of harm. ERMA reiterated the primary claim of DoC that 1080 is needed to control possums from causing collapse of our native forest canopy.

Incredibly, however, when one carefully examines the evidence there is almost no science supporting this contention. Studies attempting to prove this have instead found no correlation between canopy status, aerial 1080 treatment, and possum populations, but definitive research has not been done.

While possums do prey on trees and probably have some impact on the distribution of favoured species, the claims of forest collapse are greatly exaggerated or possibly even false. But this is speculation. The vital point is that we are exposing our forest fauna to massive amounts of a universal poison without knowing the ecosystem consequences.

The ERMA report also contends that aerial 1080 is needed to reduce the spread of bovine Tb in cattle and deer by targeting possums that are the primary wild animal vector for Tb. In fact, as AHB studies have shown, possums can be effectively controlled with ground based trapping whether with 1080 or other toxins, at only nominally greater cost in the deep forests, and there is considerable question as to whether possums need to be eliminated from the deep forests to control bovine TB.

ERMA recommends that more research be done with which we certainly agree, Regrettably no study of long-term sub-lethal dose effects on native species was recommended although the need was clearly pointed out by us and others as an area desperately requiring urgent study, by a country that is distributing 80% of the world’s of the substance indiscriminately into its environment.

Moreover ERMA failed to suggest that control of the research should be taken out of the hands of the financially benefiting agencies, DoC and AHB. This is particularly distressing given the easily documented bias and misrepresentation that characterized DoC-sponsored and controlled research.

Equally, ERMA did not mandate the cessation of aerial 1080 until the extent of its damage and its real benefit, if any, can be established. On the positive side, we are pleased to note that ERMA has not indulged in some of the more hyperbolic claims of DoC, such as the recent assertion of Al Morrison, the Director-general of DoC, that New Zealanders have the choice of Kiwis and 1080 or no Kiwis, which is by any standard an outrageous and unsupportable statement.

In summary, the ERMA committee has almost entirely ignored the published scientific research and instead appears to have parroted back almost verbatim the systematic misrepresentations and distortions of the DoC/AHB submission document. In so doing it has grievously failed in its public responsibility to function as an independent scientific body protecting the environment from the vested interests.