Poison
Propaganda
Compound 1080’s
greatest threat to wildlife occurs when Defenders of Wildlife uses
it to raise funds.
By Barney Nelson,
Ph.D.
Doctors began receiving
calls from worried duck hunters. A police radio broadcast warned
that ducks retrieved by their dogs may have been poisoned by 1080
rather than shot. The duck hunters were justifiably nervous. This
odorless, tasteless poison is deadly and almost impossible to
detect, yet over the past 30 years
New
Zealand has annually scattered
4,400 pounds of technical grade 1080 in various wildlife control
programs. With the measly 3.4 pounds used in the
United
States heavily regulated by the
Environmental Protection Agency, New Zealand’s tonnage seems
suicidal. But at last check, life seems to be continuing
there.
So, instead of running
scared and canceling their program, doctors and scientists at the
The New Zealand National Poisons Information Center at
Otago
Medical
School responded not only
calmly, but humorously to the worried callers. With tongue-in-cheek,
they reassured duck hunters that, because human tolerance of 1080 is
quite high, they would not only have to eat half their own weight in
poisoned duck meat, but also eat it raw since 1080 becomes unstable
and loses much toxicity at cooking temperatures. They also explained
that as an antidote alcohol may have “some beneficial effect.”
Because the scientists knew that in
New
Zealand “duck hunting and
alcohol consumption correlate with a high degree of significance,”
the poison center assured duck hunters that they were quite safe as
long as they cooked the ducks, didn’t eat over half their own weight
in meat, and drank plenty of beer.
Over the past 20
years, Australia and
New
Zealand scientists have left
us in the dust on both humor and 1080 research. Their research is
extensive because their use is extensive. In
Australia 5 million small meat
baits have been distributed annually to control dingoes. In 1990,
when possums and wallabies were killing the pohutukawa forests, the
New
Zealand government broadcast
25 tons of 1080 pellets across the island. They discovered that
because 1080 dissolves easily in water, it disappears quickly in
rain, plants, soil organisms, and is excreted in animal body fluids,
leaving no residue in spiders, snails, earthworms, or fish.
However, easily
dissolving in water has brought out the alarmists who warn that it
might fall into terrorists’ hands, even though 1080 occurs naturally
in the environment in poisonous plants and can be made in almost any
large university chemistry lab. Peter Friederici, in an article for
Orion Afield, warned that “a teaspoonful could kill at least
30 adults.” Then an Associated Press article quoted The Predator
Defense Institute and the Friends of Animals as claiming “one
teaspoonful can kill up to 100 adult humans.” The numbers are
probably still rising.
Calmly, New
Zealand scientists designed
several worst-case scenarios, including one where a plane loaded
with 1080 bait crashes into a water supply and every gram of 1080
dissolves into the water. Because 1080 dilutes rather than
contaminating (like either drinking a glass of straight whiskey or
pouring the same glass of whiskey into a 50-gallon barrel and then
drinking a glassful), the scientists found no danger. Like duck
hunters, it would be impossible to drink enough water to accumulate
a lethal dose.
Yes, Compound 1080 can
poison people. So can
alcohol. However, at 40% (or 80 proof) and used in moderation,
alcohol is relatively safe and results only in happy intoxication or
vomiting. Contents of the bottles stored in cupboards under most
kitchen sinks can easily poison people too, not to mention the stuff
in our medicine cabinets, garages, and lawn-care storage sheds. Yet
somehow owners of these highly toxic homes raise generation after
generation of children and pets. Most people do follow label
directions and keep dangerous substances out of the reach of
children.
In
fact, not a single human has ever been killed using 1080 in predator
control, although there have been two “close calls.” Five people in
British
Columbia
stole and ate 1080-laced moose meat and all later complained of
diarrhea. In North
Dakota,
a prepared 1080 bait station sheep was stolen and transported to a
nearby Sioux village. Eleven people ate the mutton after it had been
cooked by boiling in water. None of the people even had a stomach
ache, although six dogs died after licking fluids off the
sheepskin.
For far too many years
scientists have written only for each other while our politics is
controlled by the media through sensationalism, lies, and bad
science. According to the American Association of Poison Control
Centers, the greatest fatal chemical danger to children comes from
ingesting cosmetics and personal care products, yet no environmental
group has lobbied to outlaw them. If the concern is for animal
welfare, then dogs, coyotes, wolves and grizzlies are easily killed
with drinkable antifreeze or meat soaked in it–with the added bonus
that it doesn’t even freeze in the winter, but antifreeze also sails
past both animal rights activists and the EPA.
The most useful built-in safety factor concerning 1080 is
that almost every animal has a different level of tolerance. Many
people have the mistaken belief that poisons are equally toxic to
all species, but wide variations, including immunity, are
surprisingly common. Extensive testing for lethal dose levels (LD50)
for various species revealed that coyotes, for instance, were highly
susceptible to 1080 at much lower concentrations than almost any
other animal (see table). The LD50 for a particular rodent is
sometimes 80 times as high as the dosage needed for coyotes. Two
hundred times the
coyote LD50 is needed to kill a turkey
vulture.
Yet, even the methods behind the research are misrepresented
and used against the scientists. It is a well-known fact that
small advocacy groups invent “experts” and misquote or twist facts
in order to dupe the public and play on emotions for fund raising
purposes. One California report opposing re-registration of 1080
claimed that a “review of carcass statistics collected by the Denver
Wildlife Research Center between 1966 and 1969 indicate that golden
eagles were one of the major victims of 1080 poisoning.” However, these data did not
come from wild eagles accidentally poisoned, but some that had been
pen-raised and used for LD50 trials.
The LD50 research,
summarized by Stephen Atzert, found that 1080 usually accumulates in
the intestines of a poisoned coyote, the first thing consumed by
golden eagles. A golden eagle’s LD50 is 20 times as high as a
coyote’s, so in order for a golden eagle to receive a lethal dose it
would need to consume the internal organs of from 7 to 30 coyotes,
assuming the coyotes did not excrete or regurgitate any of the
toxicant, which they usually do. The internal organs of a
coyote weigh about 6 pounds, but golden eagles consume only about 2
pounds of food daily. Eagles can’t possibly eat enough poisoned
coyote intestines to harm them.
Using
a recommended 1080 concentration lower than often found naturally in
plants,
coyote bait stations were used safely and effectively in the U.S.
for 25 years, while coyotes also expanded their range and suffered
no permanent population declines. Although the stations were usually
considered livestock protection devices, they were also useful in
reducing coyote numbers for the purpose of wildlife management. However, in 1963, with
publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a book
condemning pesticides, the entire chemical industry was cast in the
role of evil sorcerer. Carson’s prediction that
pesticides would someday give us spring without songbirds resulted
in a national outcry.
One short year later,
the Predator and Rodent Control (PARC) program underwent a special
investigation chaired by A. Starker Leopold. Subsequent writers have
summarized The Leopold Report as a “scathing denunciation of the
whole poisoning program.” In truth, the report defends the bait
stations as doing “an effective and humane job of controlling
coyotes and have very little damaging effect on other wildlife. . .
. we agree with PARC that it is perhaps the most efficient and one
of the least damaging methods of coyote control.”
Leopold did fear,
however, that the more
potent 1080 rat dosage “could” cascade through the
environment like DDT (which is also in the process of being somewhat
exonerated). He was outraged that two
California condors “may
have died of 1080 poisoning.” However, 22 years later, after
extensive research at great public expense, the Denver Wildlife
Research Center (DWRC) team concluded that “Vultures and condors are
considered relatively immune to 1080.” In the end, the
coyote bait stations and later 1080 itself were outlawed in the
U.S., while the rat
poisoning program continued quietly because nobody seemed to care
enough about saving rats to send money. In truth, only
out-dated fears or intentional misrepresentations of science have
been cascading through the environment.
Sometimes emergency use of 1080 is
even allowed in far corners of the U.S., for instance to control
rabid feral cats on Guam or to control Arctic foxes preying on the
endangered Aleutian Canada geese on Kiska Island, Alaska. However, Defenders of
Wildlife was quick to jump on the Alaska case for fundraising: “1080 is too
toxic for its use to EVER be justified!” Audubon writers found the
program safe. But these conflicting views between activist groups
seldom reach the public. In contradiction
to Silent Spring, songbirds may actually be in more danger
from bird lovers’ house cats and Defenders of Wildlife than from
chemicals.
The New
Zealand government also suffers criticism
from uninformed citizens who often cite
U.S. activists as “authorities.” So education of the
general public is treated as a high priority. When poisoning permits
are approved, agencies are required to hold educational programs in
the schools. Frustratingly, in the
U.S., while Compound 1080 has been tested and retested by
the world’s most reputable scientists, then approved, registered,
and licensed; periodically, it is railed against by uninformed
activists until deregistered, delicensed, and rebanned, even when
used to help predators and humans co-exist more peacefully.
For instance, in the early 70s, problem
animal biologist, Roy McBride, patented a Livestock Protection
Collar (LPC) that he had designed as a win-win solution to both
predator and livestock protection. The collar is positioned around
the throat, where predators typically attack, and contains a safe,
canine-targeting 1% solution of 1080. The collars are effective on
any animal that kills by throat bites and are used extensively
around the world on livestock-killing coyotes, bobcats, lynx,
black-backed jackals, Andean fox, hyena, and leopard. Often, as in the French Jura
Mountains, the collars have made reintroduction of an endangered
species, in this case European lynx, possible and even welcome to
livestock owners, because the collars target only the specific
animal that has learned to kill livestock, allowing the non-guilty
to live. The toxic
collar also passed years of extensive DWRC research with flying
colors.
Yet the 1995 EPA
Reregistration Eligibility Decision for McBride’s collars warns that
1080 is “considered mobile and consequently has a high potential to
move downward in soil and reach groundwater.” It prohibits use of
the collars in several California counties “due to
potential adverse effects to endangered species (California
condor),” and it says 1080 is “very highly toxic to the mallard
duck.” Since the
dangers being summarized have been proven wrong, and an
educated guess would have to assume that ducks do not kill sheep by
throat bites, one can’t help but wonder if even the EPA reads the
research they generate, since these statements are so far from
accurate. McBride expected the environmental community to embrace
his invention. But that
did not happen, perhaps because of 1080’s value as a fundraiser.
Instead of educating the
public, while trying to protect their own political vulnerability
and funding, U.S. government agencies hide
behind secrecy and have also been responsible for discrediting with
the public almost anyone connected to “extractive” resources. These
tactics are quickly polarizing and eroding everyone’s credibility,
not to mention progress, in finding fair solutions to both predator
control and predator protection. Consequently, the voting public is
becoming less informed and more subject to manipulation. Perhaps we
need to follow New
Zealand’s example and demand
that our government agencies read their own research and provide
accurate and up-to-date quality information to our public school
teachers. Democracy doesn’t work with an uneducated
public.
For those who want to
read the science themselves, even small-town local libraries
can order these documents through interlibrary loans, just
ask:
*With
just a simple “1080" search, hundreds of studies come up in the
Wildlife and Ecology Worldwide research database, more can be found
with “toxic collar” or “poison collar” or combinations like “coyote
and poison.” Searches under specific scientist’s names will also
turn up more.
*For a complete history of Compound 1080, see Guy Connolly’s
“Development and use of Compound 1080 in Coyote Control 1944-1972”
Proceedings of the 21st Vertebrate
Pest
Conference, Visalia,
CA,
March, 2004.
*The
Leopold Report can be ordered as follows: A. Starker Leopold,
“Predator and Rodent Control in the
United
States.”
29th North American Wildlife Conference, Wildlife
Management Institute, Washington,
DC,
1964: 27-49.
*For
those interested in revisiting DDT, see Malcom Gladwell’s article
“The Mosquito Killer” in The New Yorker,
July
2, 2001.
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