Science writer Dave Hansford says science deniers are putting New Zealand's unique wildlife at risk.

Opinion: A small core of science deniers has ransacked the vision of the very community it purported to represent, science writer Dave Hansford says.

On 26 July this year, protestors calling themselves the Brook Valley Community Group (BVCG) sought judicial review in the High Court in a bid to stop the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary eradicating rats with an aerial drop of brodifacoum.

"Nelson poison drop faces legal action by residents", ran a headline.

TIA MUDDLE The Brook Sanctuary Trust wants to create a predator-free sanctuary in the Brook where wildlife can flourish.

In fact, Brook Valley residents were few at the Wellington High Court. Six of the Group's ringleaders live nowhere near it.

Rather, the Group was infiltrated by anti-1080 activists from around the country.

The review application came couched in affidavits from Jim Hilton, of the Ban 1080 Party executive committee; and from veteran anti-1080 campaigners Jo Pollard and Waikato Regional Councillor for Taupo-Rotorua, Kathy White.

PATRICK HAMILTON/STUFF The poison drop at the Brook Sanctuary has drawn a number of protests, including this one in 2016.

The Group was supported in court by Te Whare O Te Kaitiaki Ngahere, a West Coast group "with the sole purpose of holding the 1080 poisoners accountable in Court."

A consent hearing, held in April 2016, invited expert testimony.

The Group's Save the Brook blog site advised residents that; "There is no limitation on what is deemed an expert witness... Thus I suggest you decide what you are an expert in such as 'Living in the Brook' ... You could also be an expert in dog walking..."

MARION VAN DIJK/STUFF Tim Mitchell in 2016 protesting outside the Nelson City Council against the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary poison drop .

For his part, Hilton told the court he was an expert in "wildlife management" and while he holds a bachelor of science (hons), he hasn't worked as a biologist in 44 years.

Another affidavit came from Dai Mitchell, an anti-1080 diehard who elsewhere has tried to link polio to indoor plumbing.

Rather than constructing an argument, the Group's case relied on supplanting proven science with conspiracy ideation and opinion. Justice Churchman threw out every last challenge.

CHERIE SIVIGNON/STUFF Brook Waimarama Sanctuary Trust chairman Dave Butler, left, and general manager Hudson Dodd said the first of three planned poison drops was a milestone for the sanctuary.

This group was never contrived to advance the interests of its eponymous community. It had but a single purpose – to foil the conservation effort at Brook Sanctuary.

Churchman's judgement dripped with exasperation at the dismal quality of the Group's "evidence", and at the desultory cynicism of the legal action.

The Brook activists decried their defeat as a failure of democracy.

Lawyer Sue Grey represented the Brook Valley Community Group.

But there is nothing democratic about a handful of zealots trying to tear down the vision of a city by sham. About ransacking the endeavour of hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

About denying them the realisation of thousands of hours of selfless work.

This anti-science agenda had already cost the Sanctuary, its supporters, conservation NGOs, ratepayers and taxpayers close to $100,000, when, on 7 August, Brook Valley Community Group lawyer Sue Grey lodged first an appeal on the High Court ruling, then an injunction to stay the poison drop.

MARION VAN DIJK/STUFF A walker walks along side the Brook Stream at The Brook Waimarama Sanctuary

Both failed, and the aerial operation finally began — nearing the close of the optimal time window for rat control – on September 3, but not before the Sanctuary fence had been vandalised and trees cut down across the access road.

The morning of the drop, safety fences were pushed over, and a hole drilled in a helicopter refuelling tank.

Later that morning, Nelson MP Nick Smith reported that a man and a woman had tried to rub rat poison over him, and threatened to poison his family.

New Zealanders have broadly agreed to rid this country of rats, possums and stoats by 2050, and the Government has backed the proposal with nearly $60m of funding.

Predator Free 2050 has justly won the admiration of the international conservation community, and restored some measure of hope for the nearly 4000 native species at some degree of risk of extinction in New Zealand.

But clearly, not everyone has subscribed.

Alongside new trap technology, refined toxin application techniques, long-life lures and gene editing, the Brook fiasco signals a clear and urgent need for a parallel programme of psycho-social research.

For the sake of the projects that follow, we have to identify the underlying drivers of the sort of delirious science denial that dogged the Brook eradication.

For years, comms teams have simply fired off facts out of some forlorn belief that truth will eventually prevail; that people will finally accept the weight of research and evidence.

But there is a sector of the society – and we have no idea how big it is – for whom facts are anathema.

The Brook activists chose to entirely ignore the reality that other fenced sanctuaries – Zealandia in Wellington, Orokonui in Dunedin, Shakespear Park north of Auckland, Maungatautari in Waikato – all used aerial brodifacoum to eradicate rats, with none of the apocalyptic doom they foretold for Nelson.

For some, power lies not in knowledge, but belief.

By late afternoon on the day of the drop, Brook activists were posting on Facebook that they were succumbing to poisoning: lawyer for the group, Sue Grey, complained that her "exposed skin was red and burning", and urged her compatriots: "If my health suddenly deteriorates please can someone make sure that I get an urgent injection of Vitamin K."

It behoves us to understand just what the hell is going on here, because solutions to the monumental problems we have to solve – climate change, biodiversity loss, water pollution, human health – can only be informed by science.

But what if swathes of society refuse to accept that science?

It's too late for the Brook Sanctuary.

The BVCG will almost certainly dissolve when the time comes for reparation of the vast costs it has inflicted.

It will simply walk away, still convinced of it own moral rectitude. In late August, Group leader Christopher St Johanser pondered the option of "starting again somewhere else", removing any doubt around the Group's purported "community" ambition.

He went on to insist that the Group "has a right to survive this" (even if, apparently, the Sanctuary did not).

The true believers will retire to their Facebook forums, ready to coalesce and conspire the next time someone tries to save wildlife somewhere.

We don't have time for this. New Zealand's biodiversity is withering, fast.

Somehow, we have to build a narrative – a collective vision of an Aotearoa rowdy with kaka, rustling with lizards underfoot, where flights of bats are a dusk delight – that everyone can subscribe to.