New Zealand First wants to ban 1080. What would that mean for our native wildlife? Dave Hansford writes
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Even for Wellington, it was bloody awful weather. A small, sodden group of anti-1080 protesters huddled against a biting southerly, the rain melting the slogans on their placards. Over the wind, they strained to hear New Zealand First list MP Richard Prosser, who told them he had a few “new truths” to share about 1080.

Environmentalist, journalist and author, Dave Hansford was recently awarded a Queen’s Service Medal for services to the environment. His recent book, Protecting Paradise, examines the debates surrounding the use of 1080 in New Zealand, and makes the case for urgent intervention to rescue dwindling native wildlife.
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Laura Keown sat down with him at Forest & Bird’s national office in Wellington to to chat about why some people fear 1080, and how a shared vision for the future of New Zealand’s biodiversity can bring people together.

A bird-lover is concerned about the welfare of wildlife after a number of seagulls were found dead on a South Canterbury beach.
The Department of Conservation says it will not take action against whoever was responsible for culling the birds which are suspected to have ingested poisoned wheat.
Zena Guthrie, of South Canterbury Bird Rescue, said she was contacted by a member of the public who spotted several dead gulls on the beach at Jack's Point, just south of Timaru, on Friday.

Kiwi, kakapo, Maui dolphin - and even the great white shark - feature on a list of 150 New Zealand species "prioritised" in an ambitious conservation strategy launched by the government this morning.
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The Department of Conservation's new Threatened Species Strategy hinges greatly on already-announced moves under the Predator Free New Zealand (PFNZ) plan to purge the country of pest predators by 2050.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright's new report, Taonga of an Island Nation: Saving New Zealand's Birds, released last week, highlighted the "tragic" state of many native birds.

And the picture was no more encouraging in Northland, according to Northland conservation advocate for Forest & Bird, Dean Baigent-Mercer.
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"A regional priority needs to be turning around the state of the collapsing native forests across the North, including the aerial use of 1080, expanding pest control along coastlines, including dog control on beaches, and resuscitating wetlands," he said.

Dave Hansford wrote a book about the pest poison 1080 because "someone had to".

"I'd grown tired of seeing the volume and the extremity and the sheer amounts of BS in circulation about 1080," he says.
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The result is a 318-page book called Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the Fight to Save New Zealand's Wildlife that dissects anti-1080 sentiment and answers sentence by sentence virtually every anti claim ever made about the pesticide.

The Dunedin City Council will be taking a ''highly cautious'' approach during a 1080 drop in an area used as a back-up treated water supply.

The council announced yesterday it had approved a request from Ospri to undertake pest control on council land in the Silverstream catchment next month.
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The council said its cautious approach to the drop included not taking water from the catchment while 1080 was present, closing tracks for 15 days, and not allowing dogs in the area for up to a year.

Kiwi, kakapo, Maui dolphin - and even the great white shark - feature on a list of 150 New Zealand species "prioritised" in an ambitious conservation strategy launched by the government this morning.
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The Department of Conservation's new Threatened Species Strategy hinges greatly on already-announced moves under the Predator Free New Zealand (PFNZ) plan to purge the country of pest predators by 2050.

I ended up sitting next to him, quite by chance, on a flight to Wellington. Slender bloke, late 50s, elegantly rumpled- I liked the look of him immediately. He was David Hansford, an undercover boffin, travelling incognito without a white lab-coat.

We got talking because I'm a cowardly flier and it was windy, and conversation takes my mind off turbulence. And it transpired Hansford and I were blood brothers as yet unmet.

Rules changes will see a nationally-coordinated approach to dropping 1080 poison in conservation areas, Environment Minister Nick Smith has announced. 
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The new regulations, approved under the Resource Management Act, would see a uniform set of rules applied for the use of the controversial poison.