I woke up twice, tossed and turned … my mind just won’t shut off.
TB test reading today and I’m pretty concerned with the potential result. I guess it’s pointless to worry but when your livelihood depends on the health of your stock it’s hard not to.
When I arrived in the Waitara Valley, midway between Napier and Taupo, about eight years ago there wasn’t a possum to be seen.
I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never been in an area with so much bush and trees and not a furry critter on the horizon.
Owen Harris was the man in charge of possum control with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and he did a fantastic job destroying the Aussie imports.
About six years ago Ospri took over the job and the possums started to appear.
Each year from then to now possum numbers have increased to the point where they are regularly seen on the road at night.
Over my eight years here the only work that has been done in the valley was a possum survey and a 1080 drop on a small Conservation Department bush block … and this valley is the buffer zone.
For those of you who don’t know, Ospri defines a buffer zone as a zone of low possum numbers to stop infection from spreading.
Ospri states it manages/monitors the buffer zones to close gaps to prevent possum migration using ground and targeted aerial control because possums spread TB.
In March 2019 the first TB-infected herd was discovered in the valley.
The first we locals knew of it was at a meeting organised by Ospri at Te Pohue School on August 29.
Kevin Crews was the main speaker supported by Jane Sinclair, Phil Dawson and Nick Dawson. The purpose of the meeting was to let us know what was happening with TB in the area.
Crews was quick to say Ospri had dropped the ball in our area and the problem was its fault.
He then followed that statement with “no one will be disadvantaged in any way should their herds contract the disease”.
I think we were all surprised and relieved by these statements and were keen to know where to from here.
The Ospri response that possum trappers will be in the valley in two weeks was also reassuring to hear. We left the meeting thinking that at least they are trying to put things right. How wrong we were.
Three months went by, more herds were infected and no possum trappers were to be seen.
A call was made to the pest control company to find out what the hold-up was. Its response was Ospri hadn’t sent out the contracts and they couldn’t do a thing till they got them.
I asked who do I needed to talk to at Ospri who manages the contracts.
I called the contracts man in Palmerston North who made several feeble excuses as to why it hadn’t been done. He was told that if he didn’t get them through to the contractor ASAP he was going to receive a visit from a very irate farmer. Magically, the contracts were received that very afternoon.
I can detail many more conversations with bureaucrats who don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation or the consequences of their incompetence.
Back in the good old days if you couldn’t do your job you would resign with dignity and allow your employer to seek a better candidate.
We farmers pay both in our taxes and levies to fund Ospri. We should be getting the best people to do the job.
There are two possum trappers as sub-contractors responsible for poisoning, trapping and monitoring the entire valley. That’s two men having to deal with challenging terrain in excess of 12,000 hectares. To me that doesn’t seem to show Ospri is going hard out to fix the problem.
These two guys are expected to cover this entire area with strategically placed bait stations and traps 75-100 metres apart and also to monitor the kill rates and regularly refill the stations. It is not possible for two men to do.
In last week’s Farmers Weekly Nick Dawson urged us “here and now to have some form of unity rather than finger-pointing”.
I’m not so sure farmers holding hands sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya is going to make this problem go away.
It is going to get worse if we don’t hold Ospri to account. This is about our livelihood.
