Letters to the editor: Chemicals not always the answer to pest and weed control

We are too reliant on chemicals to control pests and weeds, says a reader. Photo / File

How true is Jim Adams' letter (Nov 12) about the amount of toxic chemicals being used to keep nature the way we humans want it?

There are plenty of safe or safer ways of controlling unwanted plants and insects without using chemicals which kill off everything.

This also goes for farming practices where crops and paddocks are sprayed before harvesting and planting, with the result the chemicals are found in food and water.

If we do not look after nature, there will be no life because everything is co-dependent.

Joy Maskell
Lynmore

Stricter penalties needed

The vandalism of cemeteries is appalling, these places are our final resting place, the place where the remains of our loved ones, family, and cherished friends rest and where we may visit and pay our respects to their memory.

We had a spate of this back in the UK many years ago - some of it racial, most just childish backlash against their elders.

The cure has to be stricter penalties, we are too soft on offenders in New Zealand. In Canada many years ago, a cemetery was vandalised, the offenders were caught and forced to scrub clean every mark and clean the whole area.

Broken items had to be replaced at the perpetrators' cost and they were given criminal records. That stopped it.

Jim Adams
Rotorua

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