Dave Hansford wrote a book about the plague 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.

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.

About 90 anti-1080 protesters thronged the pavement outside the Federated Farmers' building in downtown Wellington in early December but they may have been chanting slogans mainly to themselves.

​ There was no media coverage at all. The group marched on Parliament waving banners calling on New Zealanders to "wake up to what's going on".

The government's use of 1080 poison has long drawn angry protest from opponents, who push a range of scientific claims about its efficiency and danger. In his new book, Protecting Paradise , Science writer Dave Hansford scrutinises each of the claims - and concludes 1080 isn't the evil it's so often painted as. He talked to herald science reporter Jamie Morton.

Via RadioNZ

1080 poison will be dropped over hundreds of thousands hectares this winter as part of the largest ever pest control operation in New Zealand.

The government has today announced $20.7 million of new operating funding as part of the 2015/16 budget.

Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said the country's largest pest control operation was being conducted to fight against the rise in the pest population expected over the winter months which threaten native wildlife.

Potential "rodent plagues" across the country may prompt more large-scale drops of controversial poison 1080, just two years after the most wide-scale drop in New Zealand history.
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Early indications from the Department of Conservation (Doc) suggest that 2016 will be another beech mast year, in which seeds from flowering beech forests fall to the ground, attracting large numbers of rats and stoats.

The last mast, in 2014, was a one in 10-15 year event, and led to rodent invasions in Arthur's Pass and Nelson city. Masts typically occur every two to six years.

The loss of our native birds from the wild has been revealed in its full extent for the first time, with a bleak and sweeping stock-take showing major hits for most endemic species.

But keeping our birds in large numbers can be achieved for a realistic price, says the Landcare Research scientist who has presented the startling figures to top ecologists.

A comparison of monitoring data, collected over periods in the 1970s and early 2000s, showed significant falls in well-known species such as brown kiwi, kokako, Kaka, rifleman, tomtit and blue duck, or whio.

View original story from Jamie Morton, NZ Herald here