Clayton Mitchell New Zealand First MP

Local Tauranga student Jake Hoffart spends his weekends baiting and catching possums – and turning a profit from it.

Being one of countless Kiwis who spend their free time out in it, Jake understands full well the importance of protecting our precious and vulnerable natural environment.

The current blue government's desire to rid New Zealand of all introduced predators would be laudable, if it weren't for how they propose to see it done.

Instead of encouraging and facilitating baiters and trappers like Jake, they want to take the lazy, unprofitable, and deadly option: 1080 poison.

Jake recently earned himself $1800 over two weeks out in the bush, achieving multiple positive results for himself, and the rest of us: enjoying nature; being physically active; earning himself solid walking-around money, participating in a $130 million a year possum fur trade; and taking noxious predators out of commission, with precision.

There is money to be made, motivated Kiwis to be employed, and results to be achieved by supporting this, much more common sense approach to predator reduction.

Meanwhile this blue government spends $105 million a year poisoning our rivers and lakes with their ill-conceived indiscriminate 1080 bombing campaign – which they now want to tart up for corporate investment. Even the manufacturers of 1080 include product warnings about it getting into waterways. But that is not the most shocking fact in John Key's ‘War on Nature'. Of the entire global 1080-poison production, New Zealand uses 85 per cent on our own bush, fields, trees and waters.

New Zealand using 85 per cent of the world's Marmite, or Swandris, or feijoas would make sense, but 1080 poison? Really? Our clean green image is surely endangered by such a demonic monopoly. And isn't this the guy who was so concerned about ‘brand NZ' that we simply had to have a new flag? We definitely need a new something. 2017 will finally give us an opportunity to get it.