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Environmentalists fear hundreds of birds may have been killed in a 1080 drop in Otago but Department of Conservation (DOC) staff say no such conclusion can be made.
On Monday DOC announced six of 12 monitored kea in the Matukituki Valley, near Wānaka, died following an aerial 1080 predator control operation.
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A Taranaki farming couple are seeing the benefits of predator control after a family of whio, or native blue ducks, took up residence on their land.
Matt and Vanessa Vujcich farm a 100 hectare dry stock farm near Inglewood on the Egmont National Park boundary, which has been the subject wide scale pest management through aerial 1080 and trapping. Six kea have died following an aerial 1080 predator control operation in Otago.
The Department of Conservation is awaiting post-mortem results to determine the cause of the deaths in the Matukituki valley near Wanaka. Predators will be eliminated from a second block on the West Coast and the land defended from new predators without the use of fences.
New Zealand researchers say they've found a potential alternative to controversial poison 1080, and it's hiding in our native bush.
1080 drops, revised to deal with an explosion of rodents during last year's "mega mast", have yielded contrasting results in Kahurangi National Park.
The Department of Conservation (DOC) said the revision had proved a success overall, nationwide. There is more good news about the number of whio or blue ducks living in Fiordland, after a possible record number were found on another tributary of the Dart River.
Department of Conservation contractor Paul Van Klink and his conservation dog Hoki conducted a survey of whio on the Routeburn a week ago. South Westland's Perth Valley has seen a massive drop in predators thanks to the combined effort of aerial 1080 and ground control tools as part of the Zero Invasive Predators (ZIP) program.
"It's been really successful. We've gone down from thousands of possums to very few, we wiped out all but five rats and we've since found and killed four of those and the best news, zero stoats" Duncan Kay, ZIP Operations Director. Read the full story here. The anti-1080 lobby last week released ‘lab tests’ purporting to find the poison in the vermin that washed up in Westport. But do their claims stand up to scrutiny. Dave Hansford investigates the claims and the evidence put forward.
Read it here on The Spinoff: https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/30-11-2019/the-great-westport-rat-mystery/ Results released over the weekend of independent testing of some of the carcasses found in Westport have done little to solve the mystery of what killed over 600 rats
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