Cancer Resources and Stories That Inspire

Cancer is a funny old thing. Most of us sort of assume it’s something people get, and the causes are likely to be a mix of environmental and genetic, and that doctors know best about how to treat it—surgery, drugs/chemotherapy, and radiation. Most folks find a cancer diagnosis pretty scary. But there are some inspirational people out there whose stories may challenge conventional thought. 

Following along from my last blog post about my own experience with radiation following breast cancer surgery, I’d like to share this handful of interesting and inspiring resources:

Dr Lissa Rankin

I’m currently reading Dr Lissa Rankin’s latest book The Fear Cure, in which she examines the role of stress and our response to it as a factor in chronic diseases including cancer and heart disease. While stressful events are a moderate predictor of ill health, our individual responses to those stressful events, and our overall view of the world—is it safe or dangerous?—is an even bigger predictor. She includes useful exercises and guidelines for folks who might want to change to a more health-promoting mindset. Lissa’s earlier book Mind Over Medicine is also excellent. And worth sharing is this Facebook post from Lissa on the key recovery factors identified by over 3500 individuals in the Spontaneous Remissions Project—these are all folks who defied prediction and recovered from apparently incurable, terminal conditions including cancer.

The number one most common factor from the Spontaneous Remissions Project is food. In general, a switch to organic foods—mostly fruits and vegetables—with a tight curb on sugar, meat, dairy, and processed foods was identified by many as an essential element for recovery.

Jaxon (from his website)

One Kiwi who has shared his story and enthusiasm for green juices, smoothees, and alternative treatments is Jaxon who, in 2008, at the age of 26 was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He’s still here, and looks amazing! His website A Creeps Guide to Cancer is an inspiration.

In a similar vein, Chris Work, now 36, had surgery for stage 3 bowel cancer twelve years ago. He’s still here today, does an awesome website called Chris Beat Cancer, and he also looks amazing. Like Jaxon, he pushes healthy food hard.

The cover says “Number 1 best-selling book on cancer in the world”—this is Dr David Servan-Schreiber’s Anti-Cancer:A New Way of Life which documents his crusade to change our perception of cancer following his own diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. Observing that we all have cancer cells in our bodies, he wondered why some people develop cancer and others do not. Again, he hits nutrition hard, recognizes the role of stress, and advocates mediation. This is a wonderful personal story of survival and quest with a ton of useful information packed in. Five-star stuff.

One woman’s miracle cancer story is Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani. This is not only a cancer survival story but also an account of a transformational near death experience. Her story is not about food but about self-forgiveness and spiritual awareness. An interesting and inspirational read.

Donna Eden’s wonderful book Energy Medicine is not about cancer or any other diseases, but about being healthy and joyous through understanding and nurturing the lines and patterns and sources of energy within and around your body. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you want to increase your understanding of how your body circulates fluid and energy, how to clear stagnant areas and strengthen meridians and chakras, and useful exercises for all sorts of problems, this book is a gold mine of wisdom.

If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, the breastcancer.org discussion boards are a great place to meet up with others in the same boat and share stories, worries, tips, and learnings.

Ultimately, the most important thing you can do when faced with a cancer diagnosis--yours or for someone you love--is become educated. Don't blindly assume the cut/burn/poison routine is not only best, but the only thing you can do. Before and while you are making health care decisions, the best single resource I can recommend is Ty Bollinger's new documentary series "The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest".  This trailer doesn't do it justice--there is just so much information here from so many health care professionals, scientists, and individual who have beat cancer about what they know, what they've learned, and what they've done. (At the moment, the documentary is being run live and for free, but I suspect after that, you'll only find snippits on YouTube and will have to buy it to see the whole series. It's not being run on television, but it should be!)

Why I Walked Out on Breast Radiation

Some of my friends and family know I’ve recently had a bout with breast cancer. Others don’t. It’s not something I’ve shouted from the rooftops or felt like posting about on Facebook, like one often does with holidays, sunsets and magical meals.  I’ve considered the pros and cons of writing a blog post (or several) on the topic, which opens it up to a bigger and even less personal audience, and have been hesitant about that. But I feel like I want to share a bit of my experience.

Monday of this week, I called up the hospital where I’ve been undergoing radiation—7 treatments completed, 12 to go—and told them I wanted to cancel not only the day’s appointment, but that I wanted to pull out of the program entirely. “Radiation,” I told them, “is just not working for me.” Not surprisingly, I got a call back a few minutes later and a request for me to come in and talk to the oncologist on call, “Just to make sure you have all the information you need and that you understand the ramifications of withdrawing from the program.” I did go in and spoke with a very nice doctor, but he did not change my mind about withdrawing.

I’ve written several blog posts on cancer previously (and before my diagnosis): Do Antidepressants Cause Breast Cancer?, Are MammogramsGood for You?, and RIP David Servan-Schreiber—A Tribute to the Anti-Cancer Man among others. So this is not a topic that was unfamiliar to me prior to diagnosis. I can say, however, that actually HAVING a cancer diagnosis involves not only a pretty sharp learning curve, but it can also be an emotional roller coaster as you confront not only thoughts about your own mortality, but constant choices about what to do and what not to do, both medically and within your personal life.

I am pretty lucky. My single tumour was small and “stage 1” meaning it had not gone into the lymph nodes (see cancer stages), and when removed surgically the margins were deemed “clear” (meaning the cancer cells hadn’t spread into the tissue surrounding the tumour). Surgery was performed as a day procedure and involved a lumpectomy plus removal of four underarm lymph nodes for biopsy. Upon analysis, the tumour was found to have “medullary features”, which puts it into a fairly rare class as cancer tumours go (see medullary breast cancer), although going by appearance it was ranked “grade 3” which means aggressive (see cancer grades).

It was a no-brainer for me to turn down the offered chemotherapy. Anyone who had read a number of my blog posts, or who knows me personally, will know I’m seriously against blanket poisoning of environments to eradicate pests (anti-1080 folks will be LOL). Radiation, though, was on the cards from day one.

The day I got the news from the surgeon that my lump biopsy showed cancer, he followed in almost the same breath, with “I’ve scheduled your surgery for Friday. I can do either a mastectomy (breast removal) or breast conservation surgery (lumpectomy) which means removing the cancer and some surrounding tissue but preserving the bulk of the breast, but if I do that, you will have to follow that up with several weeks of radiation. If you don’t agree to do the radiation, I will need to do a mastectomy. What do you want to do?” Or words to that effect. Of course I opted for the less-invasive option and the matter of doing radiation seemed to be fait accompli.

It wasn’t until I met with my radiation oncologist six weeks after surgery, and she explained the plan and procedure and gave me a fact sheet that I began to have second thoughts. Breast radiation is used to kill any errant cancer cells that might have been left behind after surgery in the breast, and it reduces the risk of cancer recurring in the treated breast by 20-30%. That’s according to my oncologist, but statistics seem to vary. One recent study followed 1010 women who had had lumpectomies for 16 years. Half of the women had radiation following surgery, and half did not. Of those who had radiation, 18% had a tumour recurrence in the affected breast during that 16 years; of those who did not have a radiation follow-up, 31% had a local recurrence, yielding an impressive reduced recurrence rate of 48% with radiation. There was no difference in overall survival rate.

Radiation specifically targets fast-growing cells but it is not capable of knowing the difference between cancer cells and ordinary body cells, so any cells in the target area that are growing fast and dividing are killed or at least seriously compromised. That’s why the most common and obvious side effect of breast radiation is skin damage, because your skin cells are constantly renewing themselves and are fast-dividing cells, and because your skin is visible. Commonly, this results in a sunburn effect with reddened skin, sometimes peeling, and some skin discomfort which can be soothed (but not prevented) with allowed lotions. However, all of the cells within a breast are affected, and because they can’t actually tighten the beams of radiation enough, or go around curves, a bit of lung tissue, local ribs, and sometimes even a bit of the heart are also affected. Tiredness is a common early (and usually temporary) side effect, perhaps as a result of the impairing of the immune system (radiation kills lymphocytes), along with breast swelling, a sore chest wall, and sometimes the development of a cough due to lung damage.

Long term effects from radiation include a general “aging” and re-shaping of the breast, increased firmness of breast tissue, especially around the surgery scar(s), a slightly increased risk of rib fractures, and a slightly increased risk of developing cancer elsewhere. Radiation exposure does, after all, cause cancer.

Mayo Clinic illustration 

Having promised my surgeon that I’d do radiation, and encouraged to do so by everyone I met within the medical community and most friends and family members (the others tactfully giving no opinion other than, “Only you can make that decision”) I ploughed ahead and signed the paperwork authorizing the treatment. A few days later I found myself stretched out on the table as two cheerful technicians marked me up, aligned the equipment, and applied the tattoos (three mole-sized permanent marks). The following week, it was game on.

The odd thing was, every day I walked out of the hospital after my treatment—it is quick, and doesn’t hurt while it is happening—with the most horrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and a lump in my throat, and more than once I was crying. Why did doing this upset me so much?

It seemed like a betrayal to my body. Having been doing its best to counteract a problem (medullary cancers are attacked by the immune system, so my body was fighting the cancer even before the surgery), I first let it be cut up with surgery (and I’d do that again) and then just when recovery was looking pretty good and the wounds were looking somewhat healed, here I was, further damaging my poor breast tissue, all under the assumption that there MIGHT be some errant cancer cells doing a walkabout in my breast, and that if so, they’d be fast-enough growing to be whacked by the radiation. (Medullary cancers, I’ve learned, are often not fast growing). Furthermore, I kept thinking “at least when this is over, I can begin to heal. In a month.” Um…wait a minute.  When this is over I can begin? Shouldn’t medicine be about healing and supporting health now? Why inflict further damage to already damaged tissue as a “preventative”?

I realized that I was doing these radiation treatments mostly because other people thought I should. I realized my gut feeling was to walk away. My heart and throat told me to walk away after each dose. And even my cognitive/head thinking was finding it increasingly difficult to justify the pro over the cons. My body wasn’t in alignment with my actions. And nothing about undergoing radiation was in alignment with my core belief that the body is a self-healing ecosystem that should be nurtured and helped to heal at all times.  It felt wrong. “What would you do if fear wasn’t stopping you?” I asked myself. And the answer was clear.

 It took courage to call the hospital and say I wasn’t going back. It meant accepting that I could be making a mistake, and the cancer could come back, and the authorities will scold me if it does. But it feels like a weight has lifted. Whatever comes in the future, I accept the results of my decision.  And although I find it hard to consider this cancer experience a blessing as some “more advanced souls” might do, I acknowledge the power of this episode to broaden my experiences and clarify my values.

See my next post for recommended resources and inspirational stories about cancer survival.

Rotten Tomatoes

Like most folks, I’ve carried around this sort of vague idea of how genetic engineering works, with images of white-coated scientists bent over their super microscopes, physically cutting and splicing gene sequences between species to create new varieties. Authorities proclaim them “safe”, anti-GMO folks say they’re not. I climbed on the anti-GMO bandwagon not so much because of safety concerns over GMOs themselves—after all, the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) tell us they are “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS)—but because they entice farmers to overuse agri-chemical killers (herbicides and pesticides) that many GMO plants are altered to resist.

Reading Steven Druker’s new book “Altered Genes, TwistedTruth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food has Subverted Science,Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public” has been a profound eye-opener. I think the story from the book that best encapsulates for me the danger, not only of these foods, but also the danger of the cavalier attitude of authorities that are supposedly responsible for our food safety, is the story of Calgene’s Flavr Savr™ tomato. I’d like to briefly share that tale here.

Back in the early 1990s when genetic engineering was in its infancy, California genetics company Calgene (later acquired by Monsanto) took on the tomato. It was well known that consumers preferred vine-ripened tomatoes, but by the time ripe tomatoes were picked, processed, packaged, transported, and landed on supermarket shelves, they had often gone soft. Tomatoes picked green stayed firm, but lacked flavour. Calgene tackled this problem with genetic engineering.

Calgene scientists modified their tomatoes by supressing the PG enzyme that causes fruit to go soft. They did this by copying out that section of the enzyme gene and reversing it, then reinserting the flipped segment back into the enzyme with the aid of the 35s promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus. (That detail isn’t all that important, except to point out that the process of genetic modification is far more complicated than most folks realize.) The new tomato looked good.

The US FDA encouraged Calgene to do a safely trial on rats, so they did. In that first 28-day trial, some rats ate the GE Flavr Savr tomatoes, some ate ordinary tomatoes, and some ate no tomatoes at all. At the end of the trial, they found that 10% (4 out of 40) of the rats who had eaten the Flavr Savr™ variety had developed stomach lesions (bleeding) while the others hadn’t. Fluke? They hoped so. They tried the test again, and this time 20% of the Flavr Savr™ rats had stomach lesions. So they tried the test a third time, and this time, again, 20% of the Flavr Savr™ rats had stomach lesions, but so did a few of the non-Flavr Savr™ rats. Understandably concerned, the researchers took their results to the FDA.

Some of the scientists at the FDA who looked at the results expressed their serious concerns about the safety of these tomatoes too, but while they were considering what to do, the administrative branch of the FDA brought in a new ruling stating that GM foods were to be considered GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) and that safety studies involving animal test subjects need not be done because GM foods are, by definition, “substantially equivalent” to non-GM foods and therefore need no pre-market approval (1992).

Since animal testing was no longer required, results of these rat tests on Flavr Savr™ could be ignored. The FDA ruling allowed Calgene to proceed with Flavr Savr™ production, and Flavr Savr™ tomatoes were brought to the market in 1994 as a premium-price product. They were discontinued in 1997, ostensibly due to Calgenes "inexperience in business."

There is an even more frightening kicker here. In the Flavr Savr™ study documents, there is a small endnote that reports that 7 rats of the original study DIED within two weeks of consuming the tomatoes. The researchers attributed the deaths vaguely to “husbandry”, and replaced the dead rats, apparently DURING THE TRIAL PERIOD, with fresh, healthy rats. Rather than being investigated, this astounding revelation and violation of standard testing practice appears simply as a note in the study.

The Flavr Savr™ tomato did not survive in the marketplace, but the FDA precedent set—that GM foods do not require animal testing because they are assumed safe—and safer than food additives, which do require testing— has survived. I believe this assumption is profoundly disturbing.

I highly recommend Steven Druker’s book. Druker is a public interest attorney, and although at times the book reads more like a legal argument than a general-interest or scientific analysis, it is clear he has done his homework. He helped initiate a lawsuit against the FDA forcing them to release their files on genetically engineered foods, and his specialty area of expertise is food safety.

Food Matters

Most of us in the Western World sort of take food for granted. And most of us assume the foods we eat help us to stay healthy. We hear about the dangers of “junk food”, of course, and are reminded that fats and sugar are naughty, and we may limit our salt intake, and pop a few vitamins, but most of us assume that what we eat, assuming we don’t live on Coke and French fries, is generally okay.

But I think there’s a quiet revelation AND a quiet revolution taking place. More and more, folks are starting to ask questions like

·         Is industrial-farmed food really good for us? As good as it can be?

·         Are the old food guidelines still accurate?

·         What about genetically modified food?

·         What about herbicides and pesticides on/in our food?

·         What is this acid/alkaline business?

·         Should I be eating organic? Or is that a waste of money?

·         What about probiotics and bacteria in the gut?

·         Why is gluten such a big deal these days?

I’ve gone to eating more and more organic foods. I’m not being fanatical about it—price and convenience still matter—but where I can make organic choices easily and within budget I do so. I also recognize my buying power as a consumer to make a statement saying “this is food I want”. Why go organic? Well, this tends to mean less/fewer/no chemicals in/on the food, supporting growers who care about the soil and land as well as selling a product, and if not necessarily a significantly healthier product than that produced by industrial farming, at least organic foods are not a less healthy choice.

I’m also reading about GM foods (and don’t much like what I’m reading), getting increasingly concerned about the long-term (and usually subtle) negative health effects of food routinely sprayed with chemicals (and how that is affecting our environment), exploring new theories on the negative impact of foods that makes your body too acidic, and taking a real interest in the important role of gut bacteria and how the foods we eat affect that.

This post is just a first pass on these topics, just raising the issues. Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to do individual posts on each of these topics. I’ll keep you “posted”. 

Fat Versus Sugar

Both of these bad boys (sugar and fat) have a bum rap, so it’s not surprising that the BBC Horizon show took it on to compare and contrast them. They found two identical-twin doctors and for a month, put the lads on contrasting diets. While one doc only got to eat sugary and high-carb foods, the other spent his month chowing down on all the meat, fat, and dairy products he wanted. While it made for a moderately-entertaining program, there were some unexpected surprises in the results.

The Diet Docs: Chris & Alexander van Tulleken

 The two docs were tested before, during, and after the month, and here’s a brief summary of some of the things they found. 

--The doc on the high-sugar/carb diet performed better than his high-fat-diet brother during the month on all activities requiring intense concentration or physical exertion. Whether playing to win an intense stock-market simulation game or pedalling their bikes uphill, the sugar-diet doc cruised while the fat-diet doc struggled.

--The doc on the sugar/carb diet was happier and more upbeat than his high-fat-food brother.

--Neither diet had any effect on cholesterol levels.

--While the sugar-diet doc lost a little weight over the month, the fat-diet doc lost a whopping 4 kilos (9 pounds). The bad news is that half of that was muscle-loss.

I don’t think it was quite a fair comparison, however, because the sugar/carb doc got to include fruit and vegetables in his diet, while his high-fat brother did not. Not only are fruits and vegetables nutritional powerhouses (too long on a no-fruit/veg diet could have left Fat Food Doc with scurvy, for example), they provide fiber necessary for proper gut and bowel function. So I think it would have been a more meaningful contest if Fat Food Doc had been allowed at least some salad greens.

The program went on to talk about some of the actual scientific studies done on the fat vs. sugar diet issue. One study involved rats. They found that rats fed sugary diets, like rats fed fatty diets, did not overeat or gain weight. However, offer the rats cheesecake or ice cream, where high levels of fat and sugar are combined in a tasty way, and they turned into rodent blimps in no time.

While I can’t seem to find a link to the whole doco on the net, this write-up about the experiment by twin-doc Alexander van Tulleken (the fat-diet Doc) is interesting. 

Fortunately, managing our diets for optimum health isn’t an either/or proposition. Some fats are essential for good health; nutritional power foods like whole grains, fruits, and vegetables are essential for good health; and a moderate intake of a whole variety of foods coupled with daily exercise may sound like old, boring advice but it still stands up as a sound strategy. Just remember to go easy on the cheesecake. 

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.