July 23, 2018
No bridge to 1080 resolution
An anti-1080 campaigner will have to wait to continue his hikoi to parliament after he was arrested on Saturday trying to cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Emille Leaf failed to get authorisation to follow in the footsteps of the 1975 Maori Land March and walk over the bridge.
He tried anyway, leading several hundred supporters from Onepoto Domain towards the access before they were blocked by police.
He is due to appear in court on Friday.
Mr Leaf told Radio Waatea host Claudette Hauiti he feels it’s no longer safe to gather food and medicinal plants from the forest around his home on the West Coast of the South Island because of the amount of the poison that has been dropped there over the decades.
He says the politicians refuse to engage in discussion about what he calls a super-toxin.
"They don't enter into any meaningful discussion or conversation about it at all, just refer you to previous statements," Mr Leaf says.
In a 2011 investigation the parliamentary commissioner for the environment Jan Wright concluded 1080 is both safe and effective for killing the possums, rats and stoats that are killing native bird populations, and it naturally breaks down in the environment.
Copyright © 2018, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com