KEY POINTS:
For years, on talkback, I've had trampers and hunters ringing me, railing against DoC's use of the poison 1080.
They say that after the 1080 drops the birdsong is gone.
There's an eerie silence because the birds have pretty much been nuked by the 1080 drops.
It takes weeks, sometimes months, for the forest to recover, they say, but despite numerous letters, emails and protests to DoC, the poison drops continue.
And that's because the hunters' and trampers' stories are anecdotal, say successive DoC spokespeople.
There's no hard data to back them up and DoC likes hard data almost as much as it likes saving the planet.
All the evidence our Government department has suggests 1080 is safe to use in forests.
It's only dangerous for mammals and as we have no indigenous mammals, apart from bats, it's appropriate for New Zealand to use the poison as a pest-control option.
Other countries have native mammals that would be at risk; that's why we're the only country left in the world that uses it.
Besides, DoC spokespeople point out darkly, hunters have their own agenda. They want some pests, such as pigs and deer, left in the forest, otherwise they'd have nothing to shoot.
The Conservation Department wants completely pest-free zones to allow our native flora and fauna to survive. And on goes the debate, year-in, year-out, with DoC the winner on the day as the use of 1080 continues.
Things turned nasty recently when an activist dropped 1080 pellets into the open ute of a Greymouth Animal Health Board contractor, the board that administers the poison drops.
The man was forced to shoot his 10-year-old huntaway dog to put it out of its agony. Although there have been assurances from the Greymouth mayor that there will be no more nasty actions of this type, the board has decided to hire bodyguards for its contractors. Combine zealots on both sides and sprinkle with a little West Coast anarchy and it's a recipe for disaster.
Now the death of seven kea in the Fox and Franz Joseph area has prompted a call for a rethink on the continuing use of 1080. The kea died after an aerial drop of the poison and although DoC is adamant 1080 is still the best pest control for the job, others beg to differ.
Nick Smith, National's conservation spokesman, wants an independent review of DoC's pest-control management and other parties have echoed the call.
Peter Dunne went so far as to call it avian genocide. Just last year, the Environmental Risk Management Agency decided DoC could continue with aerial drops after sifting through five years' worth of evidence, 1400 submissions and a series of public hearings throughout the country.
DoC may see seven dead kea as collateral damage but surely the dead birds make a compelling case for coming up with alternatives to a poison that is proving toxic to our communities - in every sense of the word.
