Comments on: Frogs don’t like rock snot

By: stuey

stuey — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 10:42:52 +0000

there was a letter in the Herald yesterday saying that controls on human and powerboat movements are pointless because ducks would spread the snot from river to river (ducks don’t sterilise their feet) and the whole country is doomed to eventual snottiness.

Sounds reasonable. I don’t know anything about the subject so I’m hoping someone else has a comment.

By: Tane

Tane — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:30:16 +0000

BJ,

You’re right, fire ants are easier to spot than microbes, which is why MAF surveillance programmes have spotted them twice, and early enough to destroy them (only one nest on each occasion). But give the buggers enough time…….

Alastair,

The key to Peak Oil ‘improving our biosecurity’ is that it will firstly almost eliminate trans-oceanic flight. Secondly, as you say, economic activity will be so depressed that there will be a substantial reduction in trade. Not only can we expect ship sailings to reduce in number, but the ships themselves and the tonnages they carry will be smaller. No more car carriers in from Japan, no more bulk iron-sand carriers moving to China.

By: alistair

alistair — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:17:29 +0000

I agree, but… we’re not a powerful country, so we’d get nuked. Only the big boys get away with cheating.

And I don’t think peak oil will actually hit international shipping all that hard, except as a consequence of diminished overall economic activity… fuel costs per ton are very low, they can go a lot higher and only knock out very low-value cargoes.

By: jingyang

jingyang — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:18:28 +0000

Sure, it is protectionism. There are ways and means around the WTO, no powerful country would sign up if there weren’t.
I think NZ has been overly influenced by the free trade paradigm. Somehow we have to be ‘pure’. Bull. Everyone cheats, so should we.
Perhaps instead of collecting the money at the airport, we tax the tourism companies who then pass it straight on to their customers. AFAIK there is nothing to stop the government increasing GST on some products and services and not others. Maybe we can increase GST on airline tickets. Or put a 500% GST on airport levies. Frankly, I think we should cheat. If we get ‘caught’ change the rules until we get caught again. I have very little compunction about ‘cheating’ on free trade’. Because as you point out Alistair, it includes absorbing a lot of externalised costs.
In addition, the Greens as a policy could have our trade negotiators push hard on ensuring that the costs of ‘free trade’ are not externalised. There are many other countries facing the same issues here.

By: alistair

alistair — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:12:36 +0000

yeah good idea but we’d get nuked by the WTO.

It would be catalogued as protectionism. “Free trade” includes absorbing a lot of subtle externalised costs.

By: jingyang

jingyang — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:15:55 +0000

I suggest for the meantime, until peak oil :-p)
A levy of NZ$100 on every long-term visitor (say more than 3 days) and $1000 on every shipping container entering the country to be collected in their airline ticket, or at customs, deposited straight into a “National Bosecurity and Conversation Fund” and used to assist DOC and Bosecurity on their operationsand research.
If we can justify collecting an “airport tax”, we can sure as hell justify collecting a Bisecurity levy.
NZ$100 is only US$60 or 40 quid. A very small cost compared to getting here in the first place.

By: bjchip

bjchip — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 05:29:27 +0000

Tane

With any luck we can keep the Fire Ants from making it here for more than a few years. They really do spoil the neighborhood. I suspect that they are a LITTLE easier than the algae and other things at the microbial level.

respectfully
BJ

By: Tane

Tane — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:37:06 +0000

Well Peak Oil will prove to be the best of all biosecurity defences. You cannot stop organisms, the bloody things are too good for us humans. New Zealand is the only country in the world to have eradicated Red Imported Fire Ants (Google them to find out how much of a pain they are). And we’ve done it twice!!

But if we continue to fly in all those planes, sail in all those ships and admit all those travellers (NZ and foreign) we will have Fire Ants here one day. It’s a certainty (though it may take a few decades or centuries). And if it’s not ants, it’s crabs or sea squirts or wheat virus or algae.

Biosecurity is at best a delaying mechanism. Faced with the massive number of pathways into the country, and the impossibility of closing them all off, there is no way we can prevent unwanted organisms reaching these shores. Some you can’t stop, such as the natural spread of microbes and invertebrates blown here on the wind from Australia.

Only when the jets stop flying and the ships stop sailing will this situation improve. One small benefit to Peak Oil.

By: frog

frog — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 02:52:34 +0000

Tane’s points brings to mind where I decided not to go with the initial post.

Biosecurity is one of those costs that the market so effectively manages to externalise. In this case the true cost of “millions of tourists and hundreds of thousands of shipping containers coming in every year” has come to include fowled rivers and spraying suburbs.

Is it inevitable that our environment will slowly and inevitably be compromised by our lifestyles? Or can we decide that those knick knacks from the Warehouse and a holiday in Enzed included the true cost of far more comprehensive biosecurity defences?

By: Tane

Tane — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:07:06 +0000

Didymo is unlikely to infest all of our rivers, for all of their length. It needs flowing, pristine waters, with very little sediment. If there is a fair amount of silt in it, or the water is very slow (like in a lake), it doesn’t thrive, or even survive.

The environmental impact is less that it could be; it’s not poisonous, or dangerous. Impacts on invertabrates and other river life are uncertain, though there will be some. Time will tell on this one.

It’s an ugly mess, and it’s tragic that it’s in some of our rivers. But this particular algae will not be the end of NZ trout fishing or any other water sports. The best we can do is control it, but the problem is developing and implementing some workable controls, while accepting that this thing is likely to spread.

When you have millions of tourists and hundreds of thousands of shipping containers coming in every year, these things will happen