Newspaper Article 1994 – Hunter: Bring back possum bounty

Hunter: Bring back the possum bounty

Reams of paper overflow from the boxes and folders that litter Martin Brenstrum’s dining room.

The interview with this quietly spoken Napier deer hunter is interrupted while he dashes to the boxes to dig out articles to back his claim that 1080 poisoning is not the answer to New Zealand’s possum and deer problem.

“It’s people, not poison,” he says.

Essentially, Mr Brenstrum and the anti-1080 lobby do not contest the evidence that introduced animals have devastated New Zealand’s native bush in the past.

But he says the picture is not as grim as painted by DOC and he will “absolutely not” accept poison as the answer to possum control.

“It makes me sick to see the propaganda put up by DOC and the Animal Remedies Board to persuade people to accept 1080.

“We (the anti-1080 lobby) are portrayed as extremists kicking up a fuss about nothing. We are angry only one side of the story has been told. We’ve done our homework.

“I am anything but an extremist. I try to explore every avenue of knowledge.”

Mr Brenstrum said the lobby, which has organised itself under the acronym Taanz, would prefer to see 1080 not used at all. But if it must be, then it should be the absolute last resort.

Taanz believes our export markets to places like the US could be closed through continued 1080 use. In Germany, there is a specific ban on the agricultural use of 1080.

Taanz argues there are significant gaps in Government research data.

As a hunter and trapper, Mr Brenstrum says he understands the history of introduced animals in the forest and their effect on flora and fauna.

“At this particular point in time, hunters are able to control numbers without poisons. I don’t think 1080 has been warranted in any of the recent (aerial) drops in Hawke’s Bay. It is a massive over-reaction and the alternative is to get people back into possum trapping.”

When the market fell out of possums in the early 1980s, experienced trappers moved into other work, but would be keen to rekindle their association.

Seminars, training schemes to explain trapping and all other related skills would rebuild a reservoir of skilled possum hunters, he says.

The other key ingredient, obviously, is some monetary incentive. At present Mr Brenstrum conservatively estimates it costs DOC somewhere between $10 and $20 to kill a possum. He says that by giving a possum trapper a $2 to $3 incentive on top of what he could earn from a fur trader, would certainly entice people back to the industry.

This would be more cost-effective and boost employment.

He says to keep administration fees down, the bounty could be paid for every 500 skins a trapper produces. Payment could accompany a receipt from a fur company. This would limit the scheme to the serious professionals and stop weekend hunters “shooting up country roads on the weekends.”

Mr Brenstrum says 1080 doesn’t just hit the possums and deer. It hits a number of non-target species such as birds of prey – the falcon and morepork – and species like our only native land mammal, the long and short-tail bat.

Mr Brenstrum says the bats are threatened by 1080’s effect on the food chain. Wetas eat the 1080 bait and the bats eat the wetas, a significant part of their diet. The native kaka bird, and smaller birds such as tomtits, brown creepers and yellow heads, will also take the bait, he says.

The 1080 baits will also kill rats, whose infected bodies will kill stoats and ferrets and cats. But the rat is prolific and is likely to bounce back in even greater numbers, in the absence of predators.

“This creates an imbalance – not a good thing.”

Research had also indicated that 1080 bait rejection was as high as 80 per cent in some areas.”

Mr Brenstrum says hunters, who have known possum numbers are too high for years, can’t help feeling cynical that suddenly the Government has started spending millions on the problem. It is obviously being driven by the fear of bovine TB and its threat to our agriculture industry.

Mr Brenstrum says the main danger from TB is not possum and deer but the movement of cattle in and out of infected areas. He says the Kawekas at present do not hold large numbers of possums in the beech country. A cyanide poison line in the beech would do well to get 40 possums from a day’s poisoning. The worst damage was done by deer 20 to 30 years ago when numbers peaked. Deer cullers were used, but the tops of the mountains remained inaccessible and weekend hunters could only walk for two to three hours. To walk further meant they could not carry out their quarry.

In recent years, the largest numbers of deer taken from the mountains are by private hunters, and with the advent of helicopter charter trips, the tops are being hunted like never before.

Once upon a time, helicopters would only take parties into the mountains during the “roar” in autumn but companies like Heliska and Air Charter now take groups from spring to early winter, putting pressure on deer numbers all over the mountains. Mr Brenstrum says this is a very important change in hunting habits and for the control of numbers.

Taanz unsuccessfully tried to stop the aerial 1080 drop in the Kaweka and Ruahine Ranges by DOC and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council through a court injunction. But Taanz believed there are grounds to take the case further based on scientific data. However, it needs funds and is at present canvassing the community for support.

Taanz knows that normal forms of protest – writing letters, petitions or protest – will do little because the Government agencies advocating 1080 are too powerful.

Dr Roger Lentle, Taanz’s chairman has produced a document outlining the areas of scientific concern to the group. These concerns range from the effects of 1080 on our overseas export trade to its effects on non-target species.

Mr Brenstrum also hopes down the track we are not faced with another DDT scenario with large-scale poisoning of New Zealand.

“I just don’t think these people should be allowed to make decisions without more public consultation.”

The battle against 1080 has just begun.

Photo caption – Dead beech trees in the Kawekas with healthy beech regrowth underneath.

Teacher, campaigner and good, keen man

Even as a small child, Martin Brenstrum was always interested in hunting. He kept butterflies, hunted tadpoles and frogs and fished for eels, much to his father’s chagrin.

When he was living in Wellington at the age of 12, he began possum hunting, cycling three to four miles to the bush, killing the possums and returning with the ears and an eight-inch strip down their back to return for the Government bounty of the day.

Reading Barry Crump’s book, A Good Keen Man, in the fourth form at school crystallised his hunting dream, which is stronger than ever today.

“I absolutely adore it, I live for it.”

Hunting really took off after Mr Brenstrum married Kathryn, had two boys Tim and Robin, and began teaching in Dannevirke with the Ruahine Ranges just a 15-minute drive away.

The income from hunting was like a second job with a ready market for the carcases he dragged out of the bush.

From Dannevirke, Mr Brenstrum took a principal’s job near Taihape at Taoroa School. The chairman of the school committee says the first question Martin Brenstrum asked at the job interview was: “What’s the hunting like?”

The family lived next to the Rangitikei River under the north-western Ruahines and in seven years, Mr Brenstrum shot 229 deer and sold 7000 possum skins. His best bale of 400 skins averaged $14.69 each at the 1980 sale in Dunedin.

The family all took part camping out in huts, catching eels and trout, pottering with camp fires and huts, while Dad hunted.

The family shifted to Taradale at the end of 1982 when the eldest boy was about to start high school. Mr Brenstrum has taught at Taradale Intermediate School since 1982, apart from taking last year off to hunt and photograph, his other passion, all over New Zealand.

Mr Brenstrum accepts that people will think he is only trying to preserve his precious deer hunting by opposing 1080. And he agrees that is partially true – he does want to maintain a level of deer.

“But 1080 kills, and kills and kills. I’m uneasy with that. I’m especially uneasy at the amount DOC is preparing to drop in the next 10 years.”

Photo caption – Martin Brenstrum with one of his many stags. Hunting and photography are his “passions”.

‘The Kaweka forest is collapsing’

If knowledge gleaned over years in the bush counts in the debate over the collapse of the Kaweka Ranges forest, then Jack Nicholas has impeccable credentials.

Mr Nicholas has spent the greater part of his life juxtaposed between farm and forest. Much of his income in the early days as he broke in scrub on his farm was earned shooting deer.

On one lonely foray into the bush, which sometimes could last for weeks, he shot 16 stags on the Makino Ridge in a day, the maximum number of skins he could pack-out on horseback in a trip was 15. As the farm was reclaimed, necessity gave way to leisure hunting.

Mr Nicholas understands the hunting lobby’s desire for deer numbers to remain flush, but he balances this with the knowledge that the forest, future generation’s heritage, is collapsing at a spectacular rate.

An obvious indication is that the Makahu River bordering his property now runs clear just two days after a flood. When he first arrived in 1955, the river took weeks to clear topsoil deposits.

Mr Nicholas said he joined the cause to save the forest because he could see “the justness. I could see the eventual demise of our forest land if the possum, deer and hares were not controlled.

“I have no specific experience but I’ve been hunting for almost 50 years. I can see where the animals are.”

The public has no idea, he says, of the vast number of possums and deer in the Kawekas, or how much damage they are doing.

The forest is collapsing and the consequence will be “a totally denuded Kaweka Range, and Australian outback, a Third-world view”.

“It is too priceless just to throw away – and that’s what’s happening. It’s like a kid with a whole lot of Christmas presents – they don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone.”

Cleft stick

He says DOC is in a cleft stick. They want to get rid of the deer but have few funds and do not want to lose the revenue they get from hunters’ hut fees.

Jack Nicholas is not an extremist and admits he did things wrong in the early days. He was slated by environmentalists for burning a small patch of fern bush inhabited by fern birds. He says he would not do the same thing today.

“Given the opportunity, I would have fenced off more scrub land.”.

Jack bought Makahu as a fit 21-year-old after working on farms in the South Island and culling deer in Westland. He was enticed north by his brother-in-law Rob Whittle, who has worked tirelessly to regenerate patches of bush in the Kawekas.

The 2343 acres Mr Nicholas bought was all scrub apart from eight hectares with a small hut. He set about breaking in the land, shooting wild sheep, selling deer skins and fencing around the district. To make ends meet. In the first year he spent 25 pounds on groceries.

The deer skins he packed out of the bush averaged $2 a skin. All of the hunting was done on foot, alone. Nobody even knew he was there.

“I got into some places that would frighten the wits out of you. But you were so superbly fit, you could take the knocks that today would cripple you. You never put yourself in a position you couldn’t get out of.”

Jack grew to know the northern Kawekas intimately – Middle Hill, Makino Ridge, Camp Spur and the Bollard area. He went over Venison Tops once but it was “too far to hump the skins back.”

At a hut he made at Middle Hill where he could dry the skins, native bush abounded. The biggest lancewood he has ever seen, with a two-metre trunk, mountain cabbage trees, five fingers and broadleafs and tree fuchsia. Nearby in the gullies were ribbonwoods, matipo and mahoe.

Today at the same campsite, there are a few little totara, pepperwood and mingimingi. He predicts the few seedlings that have grown recently will soon become deer and possum fodder.

“It’s gutted – totally.”

And so gutted that 18 months ago Mr Nicholas said the deer were dying for want of feed. One deer the family shot on scrub on the farm was a bag of bones. Suspecting TB, an autopsy showed the deed had, in fact, died from malnutrition.

“Hunters say there is heaps of food in the ranges, but there’s not. The reality is the food is there but it is food the deer will not eat – it has no nutritive value.”

Mr Nicholas said the scrub on the back of his farm should be in its last stages of a natural cycle and being replaced by broadleaf. It is not happening, the deer and the possums eat the broadleaf seedlings, he says.

“People tell you that possums don’t eat griselinia littoralis (a broadleaf), but they do, I did a lot of cyanide (poisoning) and opened up the paunches of a possum. It was packed with mingimingi seed.”

What really worries Mr Nicholas is how long the seeds remain viable in an area.

“That’s what Rob Whittle is doing, it is so vital there are little patches of bush maintained as a seed base.”

Possums now rare

After a TB scare in the area, a massive aerial drop of 1080 at a cost of $20,000 was carried out on a triangular piece of land incorporating parts of the Nicholas farm. The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Jack followed up with permanent bait stations on the farm and outlying areas and now he “rarely sees a possum.”

He now spends $1500 over and above his regional council rates to stay on top of the problem.

He thinks the aerial drop of 1080 will go some way to help but if it is not followed up with bait stations and further drops, it will do no good.

“The only option is for the State to go in and do a major poison drop, knock them (the possum) back, and then encourage farmers and others to put in bait stations. It has to be worth doing.”