From the field
Maryann Ewers and Bill Rooke, owner operators, Bush and Beyond, and Secretary/Vice Chair and Operations Manager, Friends of Flora Inc
Bush and Beyond is a guided walking business that has operated in Kahurangi National Park for 17 years.
"We are conservation based, and all trips have an emphasis on conservation issues in New Zealand. Our aim is to educate people on our fragile ecology and what we must do to save what is left.
After spending years working in the Kahurangi National Park, we have consistently seen the effects before and after a 1080 application, and have no doubts about the value of this method of pest eradication. We have witnessed time and again the return of birdsong within one breeding season after 1080 is used. We speak from experience - unlike many opponents of 1080, who base their opinions on media hype or self-interest.
We help run a major conservation trapping project, plus one of our own. We are out to save our birdlife - we don't have any hidden self-agenda regarding 1080. We wouldn't be supporting it if we had any evidence it was killing the very birds we are trying to protect. We see aerial 1080 as the best method we have at this stage to protect our flora and fauna on a large scale like Kahurangi National Park."
Read more about Maryann and Bill's work including returning whio to the Flora catchment here
Daphne Climie GP and passionate conservationist
Daphne arrived in New Zealand with her family in 1965 and simultaneously fell in love with the country and her future husband, Graeme. They shared many treasured conservation experiences here including finding female kakapo on Stewart Island with friends and taking them to grow up on Little Barrier Island.
"We helped with the first feeding supplement programe and fed both Wendy and Snark who are mainstays of the programme now.
Many common species that carpeted the forest floor in my tramping days of the '70s are now almost extinct, and our most spectacular native flower, the mistletoe, has been very rarely seen. But this summer I've been privileged to see it flowering in incredible profusion following an aerial 1080 programme in the Blue Mountains.
I've practiced medicine as a GP full time for 33 years. In four years' time I plan to retire to Stewart Island to concentrate on the smaller picture and the creatures with whom I share my world.
Our country is an aviary and, unbelievably, we've brought in mammalian predators. At the present time aerial 1080 combined with ground control is our only effective tool, and we must urgently continue with it to save our forests from inevitable death."
Don and Diane Bradley, farmers
Farmers in Arnold Valley since they were married in 1971, Don and Diane Bradley have experienced first-hand the misery of having a TB-infected herd. Since the devastating first TB-positive test, they've lost 60 to 70 cows to the disease at an average of $1200 a head. At its worst in 2006 the Bradleys' farm was placed on "high risk" status, meaning there was a complete restriction on all sales and movement of stock from their farm.
The Bradleys have worked with TBfree New Zealand since 2001 and are now TB-free.
"People don't really realise the stress and strain having TB puts you under unless they've been through it themselves. Now we just have to keep on our toes to make sure our herd isn't re-infected by possums or new livestock.
I just couldn't get my head around having to watch the young animals we had raised and got ready for production being sent out the gate and off to slaughter before they had even had a chance to work on the farm for us."
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