Now that will bring out the trolls from under the bridgeThere is no doubt that 1080 poison has a dramatic positive effect on forest plants. However it kills any vertebrate and invertebrate life forms that ingest it.
The only place for it is as a once only knock down tool followed by ground based control for fenced predator free inland islands. Even then it is difficult to justify such gross cruelty to sentient animals.
Much of the push for continuing the use of 1080 comes from the idea that this will 'save the birds'. But it is not pest animals that caused the rapid sometimes sudden extinction of native bird populations, it was actually bird diseases that came here with introduced birds. Blackbirds as an example have no special defences that protect them from Rats and Stoats yet they thrive on the bush edge where native birds struggle.
The ONLY way to save endangered native birds is stop poison drops and use ALL of that money to establish inland islands for those birds in areas where remnant populations still remain. These will be areas where there is less introduced disease and where there are bird populations that have gone through a genetic bottleneck and now have some natural resistance to build from. Start spending $ 100 mil per year on fenced sanctuaries see what happens![]()
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