Jeez it’s easy to feel conflicted when you live in the Byron bubble. Here we have our well-intentioned and hardworking Landcare group getting a grant of $99,800 to inject glyphosate (Roundup) into coral trees along the watercourses of Huonbrook and Wilsons Creek.
After the last injection trial a couple of dead platypus turned up on the causeways and since dead catfish and even a dead pademelon. It’s impossible to know if and how these things are related. Nobody loves coral tree infestations, but we don’t like killing animals either – and nobody likes drinking creek water that kills animals. Didn’t 99 per cent of us reject fracking for what it does to the water?
At the meeting last Wednesday night in Wilsons Creek Hall, the Landcare crew swore by the safety of injected glyphosate. Half the people went home feeling righteous, and the rest went home feeling a bit disheartened, uncertain and unheard. At least they should hang a sign up when they’re doing the poisoning, but apparently they don’t even have to do that.
Sam Brown, Upper Wilsons Creek
If Glyphosate was responsible for these random deaths then:
a) A test of the animal should show the presence of the chemical in significant quantities
b) There would be more than just two or three dead animals (i.e. why platypus and a pademelon and NOT all the invertebrates, birds fish or other lifeforms? especially considering that the chemical is a herbicide and has low toxicity to animals).
I am a bush regenerator and have use Glyphosate for years and observed no impact upon fauna. Native flora can certainly become a casualty; but it is long stretch of the bow to link Glyphosate to the deaths of these animals.
Correlation is not causation, and the Byron Bubble goes both ways. Chemical users need to be more respectful of those people who take a strident no-chemical stance.
The Organic mob need to acknowledge the good work that bush regenerators do and be careful of making spurious claims such as those mentioned by my namesake.
Without strong evidence claims of Glyphosate having such severe impacts can’t be taken seriously.
And a final note; if people don’t want Landcare working with such chemically based methods then they ought to get out there and do something about the weed problem that shows similar results, otherwise you’re right, nobody is going to listen to you.