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Poison Propaganda
Range Magazine, Fall 2004

 


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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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