Assumptions in Conservation: New Zealand

“Animal pests are a major threat to New Zealand’s native species. Controlling these pests is essential for the survival of our special native plants and animals,” writes the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) on their website.

These statements are presented as facts, but just how true are they? If you want to talk about prove-able true, they aren’t. These are assumptions: beliefs that are presented as facts, and often understood as facts, but they are, in truth, just beliefs. There is no hard science behind them, and no hard evidence. 

There are a few real-life examples where some native species have been encouraged to thrive in a pest-eradicated environment. Locally, Kapiti Island and Zealandia come to mind. In both cases, ongoing supervision is essential and vigilant, and the public are only allowed into these areas on a ticketed basis. These "successes" are “soft” science at best. And they are not self-sustaining, because these are islands (real and metaphorically), bastioned by man against the randomness of Nature. 

On the other hand, studies like this one show invasive species (in this case, honeysuckle) can often be beneficial for both native fauna and plants, and should have us asking if removal of many invasive species is harmful rather than beneficial. This morning I noticed a whole flock of tiny native silver-eyes feasting on the flowers of a winter-blooming Australian bottlebrush, and I thought "These birds don't care if the plant is a foreigner--they're just grateful for the winter tucker."

In New Zealand, which is currently working on an initiative to become “predator free” by 2050, the idea is to completely eradicate some invasive animal species, defined as “pests” and “predators” (as if these two words were synonyms) from the entire country. In the direct firing line are rats, Australian brushtail possums, and stoats, with allowed/encouraged bykill of other animal pests including feral deer, goats, cats, and horses, plus hedgehogs, rabbits, even rainbow lorikeets (who have the audacity to be of Australian origin!).

In the plant department, pine trees that grow wild and random rather than in neat rows in a farmed plantation setting are first-line targets for poison. Also on the Dirty Dozen hit list put out by DOC are wild ginger, English ivy, woolly nightshade, buddleia, banana passionfruit, and honeysuckle. That's just the tippy top of DOCs list of 350 “environmental weeds”. These are naughty plants! Pines dare to grow where farmers want grassland. Ivy, passionfruit, and honeysuckle dare to be vines in the forest where their presence may smother native plants. Buddleia dares to “exclude native species” (DOC’s words, not mine). 

I find the attack-imported-species approach to conservation reductionist and limiting. Unlike Man, Nature does not single out specific species as good or bad, useful or unwanted. She is holistic, and allows plants and animals to thrive in appropriate ecological niches, recognizing their value. If a niche is vacant, she fills it so the whole ecosystem can function effectively.  When an ecosystem is thrown out of kilter, Nature adapts.  She has to. The success of an ecosystem is dependent upon the many roles and functions fulfilled by a wide variety of plants and animals, as well as the environment they inhabit. We as a species are just beginning to learn about all these connections.

New Zealand is a country of farmers and gardeners, plopped like Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden of God’s Own Country. And, to be fair, this is an agricultural country with many highly-productive farms and some truly glorious gardens. But the concept of land management now goes way beyond the farm fence and the backyard garden into our supposedly-wild spaces. Where once Kiwi settlers brought their favourite plants and animals from “home” so they could enjoy them here, the “new age” thinking/fashion is to eradicate all those imported plants and animals to create a sort of mythical pre-European-human wilderness utopia. (Note, that's not pre-Maori;  early Maori burned off much of the country’s forests and are credited with 38 bird extinctions.)

Never mind that some of the native plants and animals that once thrived in New Zealand are now gone (the browsing moa, now replaced ecologically by deer and goats, is the largest and best-known example), or that the “best” and most habitable lands have been taken over by agriculture, criss-crossed by roads, dotted with towns and cities, splattered with windfarms, and altered forever. Never mind the mounding piles of plastic rubbish and old tyres, the air pollution from cars and trucks and woodfires, the phosphates and nitrogen runoff from the fertilizers and dairy cow poos and wees sinking into the soil and running down into our streams and rivers. Never mind the environmental impact of climate change. 

Our world, and this country, is not what it was 100 years ago, 300 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 years ago. Like it or not, the old pristine New Zealand wilderness is fast disappearing even in the very few places where it still, sort of, exists. We are in the process of terraforming a new landscape. The new, current goal is to create a landscape without “imports” (unless they're farm animals and plants firmly contained on farms). Plants and animals that have, like us, integrated into the new landscape and filled ecological niches, are no longer wanted. Unfortunately, the most powerful “tool” available for the goal of eradicating all these imports is poison. Hence regular aerial drops into our forest of killer poisons like 1080 and brodifacoum. Hence the rampant use of poisonous weed killers like glyphosate (Roundup), Interceptor and Versatil.

I’ll flick back to the beginning idea here. These are key assumptions:

1                       Pests are a major threat to New Zealand’s native species.

2          If pests are eradicated, New Zealand’s native species will thrive.

Are both of these statements true? Is either of these statement true? Are they true even if their environment is whittled away and poisoned? Even if ecological niches are left unfilled? 

What is Agenda 21?

The other day a friend made a comment on one of my Facebook posts referring to Agenda 21. Although I’d heard reference to Agenda 21 before, I really didn’t know much about it. This post is the result of my [admittedly cursory] exploration. Agenda 21, I discovered, is a really BIG topic that has huge ramifications for many areas of our lives. This post just touches on some of the barest basics.

Agenda 21 began as a 1992 UN resolution to encourage sustainable development. Defined by the UN, “Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations system, governments and major groups in every area in which humans impact on the environment.” Stated goals include the elimination of poverty, the protection of natural environments (earth, water, air), the encouragement of sustainable consumption, universal education, and gender equality. Most of us would find these goals pretty commendable, and a first impression might be “sounds sensible”. The problem comes with the implementation.

The biggest problem with Agenda 21 is a really fundamental one in terms of personal perspective. Do you perceive your life as all about you (ego, individual), or about mankind/planet-kind in general (the collective)? Do you cry, “me, my, mine” or “we, us, ours?” This is the fundamental conflict between the political Right (protecting personal interests) and the Political Left (socialist, collective, sharing, best choice for all) and its huge incumbent question, “Who has the right to make the decisions for the group as a whole?” No one likes being told what to do, and this is not necessarily “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Agenda 21 implies the role of the UN, or some other international body, as being allowed to set up an overall framework and regulation for various communities, organisations, and even sovereign nations to support these UN  principles, without allowing for a system of checks and balances or democratic vote.

Three arenas where references to Agenda 21 frequently crop up in the conspiratorial media are global warming/carbon tax, land ownership, and population control. Briefly, these are the cases.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has pushed the global warming agenda hard, and if you follow the money trail you’ll understand the idea of taxing people for pollution (carbon tax) is at the core. The UN, after all, is a big organization, and somebody needs to pay the piper. This is a global taxation to be leveed on [presumably] environmentally damaging development, and while the incentive (ahem, penalty) is to get folks to pollute less, it is based on two shaky assumptions: that CO₂ levels in the atmosphere contribute to global warming (which is perceived as bad for all), and that man is the primary contributor to global warming through CO₂ production. The facts that the earth has not been warming for 20 years, that CO₂ is not only a minor player but that increased CO₂ levels might actually be good for plant growth, and that although historically CO₂ levels and temperature have been linked, correlation does not imply causality, a point which is becoming more evident as CO₂ levels continue to rise while earth temperatures do not. All of these points have been blatantly ignored, sometimes out of ignorance, but more often for political and economic reasons. Science does not trump politics or economics in this case.

Land ownership is another big issue.  Agenda 21 documents identify private land ownership as a principal instrument of wealth and accumulation of wealth when land should be used [according to Agenda 21 precepts] in the interests of society as a whole. A startling map of the US identifying no-go and limited-access areas under the associated Wildlands Project “as mandated by the convention in biological diversity” caused more than a little alarm within the Republican Party and some factions of the Democratic Party when it became public.

The Wildlands Project is being pushed by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), another Agenda 21-linked organization active in 70 countries and committed to sustainable development through [opponents argue] the curtailment of individual choice in areas such as housing, transport, land access, and food. Again, this becomes an issue of mine vs. ours…does the “we” trump the “my”, and under what circumstances? And who has the power of decision and control?

A third area where Agenda 21 is raising eyebrows (not to mention concern, paranoia, and anger) is population control. While limiting population growth makes sense given the limited resources of this planet, enforced family planning on a personal level is also perceived as a violation of human rights. While Agenda 21 openly promotes general family planning and the widespread use of birth control, sterilization, and [safe] abortion, there are voices--few in number but compensatorially vocal--who believe that Agenda 21 provides a UN mandate for actively decreasing human population through various methods including warfare, fluoridated water, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, chem trails, GMO foods, pesticide/herbicide use, and deliberate or uncontrolled disease outbreaks (AIDS, Ebola, SARS, etc.).

For a sample, see "The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda"

While being rather alarmist and conspiratorial, this documentary on Agenda 21 and depopulation will leave you thinking, with news clips and quotes from the likes of Ted Turner and Bill Gates on the topic.

Although a more “leftist” philosophy in general, one can find both support for and opposition to Agenda 21 across the political spectrum. While raising awareness of how mankind is impacting this planet, our home, and suggesting positive ways forward to mitigate that impact, Agenda 21 also raises huge issues concerning individual rights and the granting of unprecedented global power to a few elite decision-makers. In a world where big corporations have more economic and political clout than many sovereign nations, I’d be really reluctant to hand over control of my life and environment to a few “wise” guys who think they know what’s best for me.

That’s my bit on Agenda 21 for now. For more reasonably-unbiased information and discussion on Agenda 21, I recommend Ben Davidson’s Suspicious0bservers site, although you have to be a paid member ($3/month or $20/year) to access this particular topic, listed under "premium content". (Most of Ben’s stuff is on planetary and space weather, and much is free to public access including his daily news.) 

I also, in my flicks around the net, came across this interesting article on how bacteria (!) sometimes act for the collective good for the colony and other times operate out of self-interest. That’s way off the topic of Agenda 21, but I was intrigued by how the same I/we issue raised by Agenda 21 for humans exists even for single-celled creatures.

Predator Free New Zealand - A Brave New World or An Asinine Proposition?

I think it sounds like an absurd proposition, but Federated Farmers (FF) and New Zealand’s conservation group Forest and Bird (F&B) announced this week—in all seriousness—their intended goal of creating a  New Zealand free of predators (see here). This extraordinary initiative, first sounded by the Predator Free NZ Trust in 2013, is achievable, they claim, by completely eliminating all of the rats, stoats, ferrets, possums, and feral cats in the country. It certainly is an ambitious goal. Can it be done? And more importantly, SHOULD it be done?

New Zealand evolved without predatory mammals, and the first rats presumably didn’t arrive until the first Polynesian settlers did sometime in the 13^th century (although radiocarbon dating of rat bones and paleontological examination of chewed seed hint they could have been here earlier, see here). European settlers brought a variety of familiar animals with them, and imported brushtailed possums from Australia to build a fur trade. Escapees soon inhabited New Zealand’s forests.

Today, the rats and stoats and possums and ferrets and wild domestic cats are all on the blacklist. While many farmers want to control bovine TB (rare in New Zealand, but not eradicated, and possums are carriers), conservationists argue that native birds-- 37 native New Zealand birds are classified as “threatened”—are at risk as long as predators roam the forests.

While pest trapping occurs in some areas, the various conservation departments and farming organisations tend to favour poisons for their pest control. The aerial use of highly-toxic 1080 is the most controversial of the poisons used, especially given the aerial method of application. New Zealand uses about 85% of the world’s supply of 1080, and rather than import it from the US, the West Coast Regional Council has invested in a 1080-manufacturing plant in Rolleston, an “innovative business decision”. This year (2014) has seen the most comprehensive coverage of New Zealand native forest with aerial drops of 1080 (see here) under a Department of Conservation campaign titled “Battle for Our Birds”, based on the argument that beech tree masting in 2014 will result in so much food that the forests will be over-run with rats, and when the seed runs out they'll turn to birds for food. (The fact that beech trees mast on a regular basis and this hasn't happened before appears irrelevant--but that's off the topic.)

Besides the absurdity of thinking all of the predatory animals in New Zealand can be eradicated, and the ridiculous amount of poison that would have to be dumped on the country to do that (presumably without endangering humans, pets, and livestock), there is a very real question here about the ecological value and benefit of removing predators from the environment. Indeed, the removal of predators from an ecological system almost always has detrimental effects.

Elsewhere in the world, ecologists are increasingly becoming aware of the important role predators play in maintaining a stable ecosystem and encouraging biodiversity. Whether talking about large predators such as wolves and lions or small predators such as sea stars or codfish or armadillos or spiders, the trophic cascade that develops when predators in the ecological system are removed has profound implications for the health of the other residents in that system, often putting the most vulnerable creatures—those most in need of protection—at even greater risk. (See Caroline Fraser’s The Crucial Role of Predators.)

There’s a great little you tube video that shows what happened when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the US. The impact on, and enhancement of, the entire ecosystem was profound and surprising. The removal of such animals would undoubtedly have the reverse effect. 

While rats and stoats may not be wolves, and conservationists might argue that New Zealand wildlife developed without mammalian predators and has no need for them, the fact remains that their removal would undoubtedly have profound and unexpected implications for our wild spaces now.

New Zealand is a unique island nation, but it is no longer isolated. Man has come here, with his cows and his sheep, his horses, and deer, and dogs, and cats. Early Maori exterminated the moa, large flightless birds that once browsed the forests, and used fire to turn thick forests into more amenable grasslands. Modern man has brought his crops of corn and wheat and ryegrass, his aeroplanes, his herbicides, and his pesticides to these island, and he has now decided that the wilds must not be allowed to develop naturally under the auspices of Mother Nature (who no doubt delights in having a good variety of plants and animals to play with), but that even the wild lands must be managed, just like any good farm. 

Depression Down on the Farm

The other day, the DomPost[i] ran an article talking about how farmers have higher rates of depression and suicide than the general public, and that more farmers died from suicide last year than from traditional “occupational” hazards. There are some obvious factors that were pointed out in the article: the financial ups and downs of commodity prices and bank interest rates, unexpected weather events, the stress of running one’s own business and having to make sound business decisions, and of course the isolation of rural life.

The story began with the “human interest” real-life example of Steve Thomson in Tainui who collapsed one day on his farm and was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. When nothing obvious was found wrong with his heart, medical staff re-diagnosed the event as a panic attack and said he was suffering from stress. He went on to become “horribly depressed” and ended up on antidepressants. [I haven’t been able to find this particular story online, but others published the same week include Farmer Suicides Raise Alarm and Feeling Down on the Farm.] Those stories all advised farmers to “seek help”. Is it that simple?

I wondered, as I read the paper over my morning coffee, if there wasn’t something else going on here. I wondered if working with agrichemicals had anything to do with Thomson’s abrupt and unexpected heart-attack/panic-attack event and subsequent depression. Synchronicity must have been in play because that morning when I logged onto Facebook, there was a link to a just-published article about how pesticides and herbicides are implicated in the surprisingly high levels of depression and suicide been reported by agricultural workers. (See High Rates of Suicide, Depression Linked to Farmers' Use of Pesticides, published in Scientific American.)

The articles were eerily similar, this second one also beginning with a “human interest” real-life example, this time of Iowa farmer Matt Peters who developed a severe and agitated depression seemingly out of nowhere. Unlike Thomson, he took his own life.

Peters’ wife Ginnie went public after he died to not only raise awareness of the farm-depression-suicide link, but also of the growing evidence of the role pesticides and some herbicides play in mental health down on the farm.

According to the article, long-term or high-exposure use of pesticides and herbicides by farmers have been linked to increased rates of depression and suicide within that sector in numerous studies in the US and elsewhere. (Also see Herbicides Linked to Depression Among Farmers and Pesticides, Depression and Suicide: A Systemic Review.)

The large and increasing role of pesticides and herbicides in agricultural use in New Zealand was highlighted here just recently when Southland dairy cows got sick and some died after eating swedes that were grown from herbicide-resistant seed and, probably, heavily dosed with chemicals prior to grazing. (See my blog post Cows, Swedes, and Dodgy Seeds).

Although farmers are generally advised to keep stock off newly-sprayed pasture, agrichemical manufacturers have sometimes claimed that their sprays are “practically non-toxic to animals” or that they have little or no effect (see here). We cannot know, of course, how the cow or sheep feels after grazing on sprayed pasture, and little if any routine testing is done of meat or milk for herbicide or pesticide residue in animal products intended for human consumption, so we don’t know how much of the residue might be lurking in our foods either.

Desiccated potato plants awaiting harvest (photo from Wikipedia)

Likewise, many food crops are sprayed with herbicides in preparation for harvest. Potatoes, for example, are often sprayed to kill the plants and make harvest easier—they call it desiccation. Other commonly desiccated crops include maize, flax, sunflowers, and linseed. If the spray is systemic—and many are--they cannot be washed off as they have been taken up into the plant structure.

The more I look into this stuff, the more uncomfortable I become. Not only is the use of all these agrichemicals bad news for farmers’ health, I suspect it’s ultimately pretty bad news for consumers’ health too. Unless you grow your own food, or have access to—and can afford—organic products, you are undoubtedly being chemicalized by not only those processed foods with nasty numbers on the labels (additives, colourings, flavourings, flavour enhancers, preservatives, etc.) but even when you go to buy supposedly healthy stuff like potatoes, lettuce, milk and meat at the supermarket.

And lastly, I find myself wondering, with the pesticide/herbicide link to depression down on the farm so easy to research, and with a major article on it out in journals this week, why the New Zealand articles in the paper and online make no mention of the connection, especially given the size of our agricultural sector. Is this a matter of ignorance and writing to a tight deadline, or a deliberate attempt to ignore or cover up the connection for financial or political reasons? I wrote a letter to the editor of the DomPost on the subject, but it was not published.

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[i] Daily newspaper in Wellington, New Zealand