New Zealand's War on Nature and its Military Industrial Conservation Complex

It's the 70th anniversary of the propaganda and censorship promoting the aerial poisoning of our forests and waterways...

Helicopters distribute lethal 1080 poisoned food-baits: screenshot from TVWild Doco here

As it is 70 years since the first aerial poison operation using 1080 was inflicted on New Zealand, so I’d like to summarise some of my posts about this ecocide and where we are today, fighting against it.

Bill Benfield, New Zealand environmental advocate, activist and author, sadly passed away in 2018. In one of his books, At War with Nature [Tross Publishing, 2015], he described the very first aerial drop of ‘Compound 1080’ poison (sodium monofluoroacetate) at Rakaia River, Canterbury, South Island - the event that started his lifelong opposition to the poisoning:

“…the sheer scale of it…a World War II Dakota aircraft was to spread the new and unknown wonder ‘answer’ for pest control, 1080, over miles of overgrown gravel river bed and river margins…the plane would fly along with the door open, and men would shovel the baits out through the open door; thousands of acres would be rid of rabbits!

I went to the site about three weeks after the event, and felt almost in awe of the extent of what had happened, the complete silence. When you are 15 or 16 you do not intellectualise as you do later in life, but there was a niggling concern that what seemed to be going on here was a war against nature, all of nature, because…there were no survivors…a dead harrier by a gorse bush, no skylarks, no small finches, no flies or crickets, no dotterels or wry plover out on the riverbed and of course, no rabbits. There was a silence over the land.”

For many people, it is witnessing this aftermath of an aerial poisoning operation that is often the emotional experience that begins a learning journey. So much so, that retired medical practitioner and specialist physician, Fiona McQueen, entitled her own book about 1080 The Quiet Forest. [link to free 2017 eBook]:

There have been many attempts to break through the fake science, conflicts of interest, censorship and propaganda about 1080. Some of which I have detailed myself on this blog and elsewhere.

Back in April 2017, US journo Maggie Sergio published this exposé in the (since closed) Huff Post platform. At the time, my colleagues and I thought this was genuine progress in reaching a wider audience through a MSM-type outlet. But once again, the article came to nothing as the corporate playbook turned its attention to its usual strategies of dismissing, discrediting and defamation.

So, it was a real pleasure to speak with

Doc Malik

the other day and have the opportunity to explain a little part of the aerial 1080 poisoned food-bait operations that continue in New Zealand. Since the post, I have already had numerous messages with questions and concerns about the policy - many people overseas have no idea this is happening. Raising awareness is crucial to stopping this ecocide.

Here is a link to the podcast (I’m the second guest after the wonderful UK nutritionist, Sarah):

#002 - Supporter Stories

And here is a link to my 20 min presentation to the peoplesinquiry2020.nz - a project that I mention in that conversation (timestamped at 1hr 25m):

Of course the Peoples Inquiry Hearing was recorded before we knew the full extent of the covid era fraud, but it’s interesting to listen back to it now, and see the connections I made then about the military industrial and censorship complex. The abuse of the behavioural science by the authorities was also evident then, as I’ve written about here:

And more specifically about an example (one of many, over the decades) of the fake ‘fact-checker’ pseudo-science that supports the 1080 poison operations, here:

As to the ‘Turtles all the Way Down’ expression, it’s not just ‘vaccines’ that this applies to. Welcome to another rabbit hole of dead and poison-resistant rabbits, the speciesism of ‘native’ vs ‘pest’ animals and all the other narratives and inconvenient truths that surround the 1080 debate in New Zealand.

Some of us have been tin-foil-hat wearing ‘conspiracy theorists’ for many years!