• Try non-toxic solution to rats • Stop the drop • Appreciate TGI’s Westside stories Try non-toxic solution to rats To the powers that be, please look into a non-toxic solution to rats. Senestech Corp. makes a product that contains
• Try non-toxic solution to rats • Stop the drop • Appreciate TGI’s Westside stories
Try non-toxic solution to rats
To the powers that be, please look into a non-toxic solution to rats. Senestech Corp. makes a product that contains hormones that cause infertility in rats and doesn’t harm other animals that eat the carcasses. After a few months to a year, the population will have totally died out.
Ruthann Jones, Soquel, Calif.
Stop the drop
My heart dropped, like the tons of poisonous Diaphacinone just dropped on Lehua!
I am appalled, shocked, deeply sad, that NOAA allowed the poisoning to proceed, despite the known detrimental environmental and social impacts.
A “Restricted Use Pesticide,” Diaphacinone is an anticoagulant known to affect not just rats, but other mammals, birds and fish. (Hey, just Google Diphacinone and, oh dear, its horrible effects are described.)
Despite continuous local opposition, is NOAA only responding to profits from Bell Labs, which developed and sold the poison?
Instead of using lethal poisons, which enter our ecosystem, where they can be toxic to animals (and perhaps plants. Who is testing?) and which are obviously unsustainable (first try at Lehua a few years ago was a failure!), please, let’s use the better technological solutions that exist and are available!
For example, let’s use birth-control products, such as Senestech, which target only male and female rats, render them infertile, and the problem dies with them.
Stop the drop! Return instead to thoughtful planning, carrying out truthful Environmental Impact Assessments, implementing effective and safe solutions, and most of all, to respecting the wishes of Kauai islanders.
As a marine biologist for nearly five decades, I have been observing firsthand the irreversible death of island cultures and marine life worldwide, in Hawaii, Okinawa, Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands, Jeju, Guam, Philippines, destroyed by greedy human activities, including pollution, overconsumption, and worst, militarization.
To deliberately poison Lehua Island is purely and simply unacceptable. Repeat, stop the drop.
Katherine Muzik, Kapaa
Appreciate TGI’s Westside stories
Special thanks to The Garden Island newspaper for its coverage of the Westside. Great writing and reporting by Jessica Else on the poison drop over Lehua Island. Folks on the other sides of the island rarely come out here and lots of things go on unreported. The newspaper is doing a great job.
Sure, the Westside has the landfill and all the poison companies, but there is also perfect weather, no rain or mud, few mosquitoes and no traffic to speak of.
It is nice to see the reporting of Westside whale research and bird conservation. The island needs to know about the poisons out here also. Even though there are Osprey helicopters and missiles flying around, we have beautiful Polihale Beach and Waimea Canyon, also.
Gordon LaBedz, Kekaha
