1080 事件背后的故事！我从来不相信真有人会投毒。我甚至怀疑这事John Key 政府自己编造出来转移视线的又一个谎言，当他的关于监听的谎言被拆穿时。
Tuesday is D-day, when someone claims they will start putting 1080 poison in infant formula if the government hasn't stopped using the pesticide to kill possums. As the clock ticked towards the deadline, Tony Wall and Blair Ensor visited 1080 hotspots on the West Coast, Taupo and Coromandel to speak to activists who have come under police scrutiny. This is their second report.
Graeme Sturgeon's arms and body are covered in a mass of boil-like protrusions - the result of exposure to Agent Orange when he was a machine gunner in Vietnam.
"I'm living proof that chemicals are bad for you," says the 66-year-old.
Fast forward a couple of decades to 1997, and Sturgeon is contracting to the Department of Conservation, evaluating drops of the poison 1080 in a remote part of the Whanganui National Park.
When the danger period had passed and the 1080 was believed to no longer be toxic, Sturgeon and a colleague flew into a remote hut to begin their post-poison evaluation.
On the fourth morning they lit a fire and boiled a billy, and were on their second or third cup of tea when they noticed the water smelt and tasted funny. Then they discovered a line of green scum in the billy, and realised "we'd bloody well been poisoned".
They climbed on to the water tank and were shocked by what they saw inside.
"We were greeted by the horrible sight of many rats floating around..their huge distended bellies now hairless and visibly full of 1080. The green dye of the 1080 was . . . leaching through the almost transparent belly skin of the rats, into the drinking water."
READ MORE: Special investigation: 1080 activists in spotlight
* D-day for 1080 threat to infant formula
Sturgeon recalls it as the "worst run possum operation we ever saw", and has been a vocal opponent of 1080 ever since, so much so that he is one of the first people police visit when a 1080-related incident occurs.
Such as the threat to put 1080 in infant formula if the government doesn't stop using the poison by Tuesday.
After the threat was made public, Sturgeon and his wife were visited at their Coromandel home by two police officers, who took them to separate rooms to take statements. The officers were polite, but Sturgeon felt he was being treated as a suspect.
For the record, he says he knows nothing about the threat: "I'm the last person to put poison in people's food or water because I've spent the past 40 years trying to keep it out."
Whoever is behind the threat has "let the side down", Sturgeon says.
It wasn't the first time police had visited. In September 2011, the Rugby World Cup had just started and a 1080 operation was about to take place around Whenuakite in the Coromandel.
According to a police report, obtained by Sturgeon under the Privacy Act, various protest groups said they knew of people who were intending to steal 1080 baits and spread them on farm land, to poison dogs and contaminate milk vats.
The police report says this led to the ministers of conservation and police and the prime minister getting involved.
The 1080 operation went ahead with a "high level of oversight from those politicians and police management", 30 police staff securing the area.
"Prior to the operation the police visited Graeme Sturgeon and reminded him of the law," the report says. Sturgeon remembers it well.
"Two detectives turned up, they were heavy, the first thing they said was, 'during a world cup things are different, you could be locked up for a long time without even going to court'."
Sturgeon says a Department of Conservation officer had misconstrued comments he'd made about people taking the law into their own hands as a threat to poison milk and the officer's children.
"He [the officer] was flown to Wellington. It went as high as the prime minister. They treated it as a national security threat. It was all blown out of proportion."
Sturgeon complained to the Independent Police Conduct Authority about the way he was treated and says he received an apology, the DoC officer eventually admitting he'd got it wrong.
It's clear from Sturgeon's police file that he is very much on their radar - it runs to nine pages, most of it covering his 1080 activities, yet he has never been charged. He says he's had constant problems with his phone, and assumes it's been bugged. "I'd be silly to think it wouldn't be."
Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement won't talk about Sturgeon. He says police are visiting people who have expressed an opposition to 1080 and been involved in previous incidents.
"There's a need for us to satisfy ourselves that these people who might have been linked to those incidents are either in or out [as suspects]."
Clement says it's clear there are many people passionate about the issue.
"I haven't yet become aware of anybody who sees this threat as acceptable, in fact I would think it's what's motivating people to actually come forward and self declare, or else when we knock on their door to speak very openly about . . . where they see this threat sitting."
What makes the infant formula blackmailer different?
"What sets them apart is they are willing to at least threaten a criminal act," Clement says. "There are a very, very limited number of people who are prepared to threaten or carry out a criminal act to bring meaning to their purpose."
Sturgeon says people shouldn't assume the person is crazy.
"I said [to police] 'you're wrong to say he's a nutter'. Because he has some 1080 that even experienced people can't get their hands on, he's obviously a very clever man. I couldn't, with my contacts, achieve what he's achieved."
THIS BRINGS IT CLOSER TO HOME
Whoever threatened to poison infant formula with 1080 is likely to be someone who has spent a lifetime in the bush, become increasingly obsessed and irrational, more and more frustrated as their concerns fall on deaf ears, finally turning to desperate measures to get their point across.
Someone like Chris Short.
To draw attention to 1080, Short hijacked a helicopter near Tongariro National Park in 1995 and forced two crew members at gunpoint to fly to a remote spot 4900 metres up the mountain.
Armed with five guns, including two sawnoff shotguns, a .22 magnum rifle with a scope, a .303, another high-powered rifle and a backpack of ammunition, he spent five days on the mountain with the two hostages before being arrested.
He served eight months of a two-year prison sentence for kidnapping, going on a hunger strike while in jail and losing 18kg.
In 2009, terminally ill with cancer, he staged a six-night vigil on the same mountain, demanding that an anti-1080 documentary be shown on television. He died in 2010, aged 51.
His widow, Taupo dance teacher Leanne Short, doesn't think her husband would have threatened to poison infant formula, but knows how the person would have been thinking.
"They've probably tried and tried and tried, your signatures don't seem to work with the government, petitions dont seem to work . . ."
Chris, a keen hunter, used to spend most of his time in the bush, but in the end it was bad for his mental health, she says, and she believes the stress of it all caused the kidney cancer that killed him. "He used to get a little bit funny, I'd think, 'you're not being rational'. I used to worry. Because he was in the bush all the time, he could see what was happening.
"Robins, little tom tits, they were his mates, he'd find them dead [from 1080]. People used to ring him up when their dogs were dying of 1080 poisoning and say 'come around and look at this' and I'd think, 'Why are you doing that to a person who feels like that about 1080?"'
The issue came before everything else for her husband.
"It was a hard thing to live with, he put the 1080 campaign ahead of us as a family a lot."
She says her husband was treated "like a king" in prison, even making hunting knives for guards. It annoyed her, because it felt like he was doing fine while she was left to deal with the fallout.
Leanne is appalled by the threat to babies, but suspects the person was sending a message to city people - rural people have got 1080 in their environment, how would you feel if it got into yours?
"Aucklanders don't care about 1080 and what's happening, but this threat brings it closer to home. They walk into supermarkets - arrgh, there's empty shelves.
"Unless someone does something radical, no-one's going to know."
Short's daughter, Teryl, who shares her father's views on 1080, says he at least got people to listen with his radical actions.
"But he was reaching the wrong target crowd. It should have been Aucklanders and city folk, those are the votes we need to stop this."
While it's sad someone has threatened babies, she asks, "Is it going to open people's eyes?"
Martin Ellis, one of Chris Short's best mates, doesn't believe the infant formula threat will be followed through. "I'd say it's just a threat. It'll be someone who loves the bush and is out there all the time and sees the damage, not just an armchair person. Someone like Chris."
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