Fox: join the dots

I THINK it’s time to join the dots on this one — Crying fox — despite the ususal howl of denial from the usual pedants.

The fox issue was generated as a strategy before the introduction of the ban on 1080 use in public forests.

With the State Government coming under increased flak for 1080 it decided the best way to defuse the issue was to pretend to get rid of its use on public land — whilst not actually doing anything about it!

DPIWE is the only importer of 1080 and is its distributor to other users.

Hence the fox hoax was a convenient means to continue imports for its usual use under another guise.

In 2002-03 the poison 1080 was used in 692 forestry operations (registered use that is) which is about 670 litres of poison. The use of this poison was almost equally split between public forests, private forests and “other”.

If the use of 1080 poison was really eradicated in public forests the annual amount imported by DPIWE should have declined dramatically — but of course it hasn’t because now “fox” baiting is conveniently consuming the same amount of poison I suspect.

The amount of 1080 imports by DPIWE would require a FOI request but I doubt that anyone has bothered to check how much is still being imported verus how much is suppossed to be used in “fox” baiting.

This is an environmental “babies overboard” — a means to justify an end.

Earlier: Crying Fox