Volunteers have gone into South Island back country looking for white-tailed deer which may have been killed by a Department of Conservation 1080 poison drop.
Despite lobbying from deerstalkers to use deer-repellent bait, the department said it could not afford modified pellets. The aerial 1080 dump beyond Glenorchy at the head of Lake Wakatipu was completed on August 30.
A dozen volunteers, co-ordinated by Lincoln University PhD student Kaylyn McBrearty, have the job of searching for white-tailed deer that may have consumed fatal amounts of bait.
The 1080 drop was part of the department's "Battle for our Birds" project, a $21 million exercise involving the largest aerial dump of poison bait yet to kill a predicted population explosion of rats and mice.
Many deerstalkers oppose the project because species they hunt - including white-tailed deer - may die from eating 1080 pellets and will remain off limits for some months after the bait drop.
