Whanganui talk on 'Battle for Our Birds'

North Island robins are especially vulnerable to predation by rats and stoats, because they feed on the ground. Photo / supplied

The controversial poison 1080 is just one of the options for controlling predators that will be covered in a Whanganui talk on October 16.

The Conservation Department's Bill Fleury will give the talk at 7.30pm in the Whanganui Regional Museum's Davis Lecture Theatre. It's free, but a gold coin donation would be appreciated.

The talk's title is Battle for Our Birds - the name given to big predator control operations in response to the surge in pest numbers caused by prolific production of beech seed in some recent years.

Fleury is a biodiversity planner for the department's lower North Island region. Before that he was the technical support officer/manager for the former Whanganui Conservancy. In that role he planned and organised large-scale pest control operations from 1990 onwards.

He will talk about how the understanding of risks has developed, what tools are used to identify the need for intervention, why different interventions and strategies are used, and how control sites are selected.

He can also give an update on some of the monitoring that is being done to assess the effectiveness of the programme. People will be welcome to ask him questions.

The talk is part of a series of monthly Nature Talks laid on by Whanganui bird and plant groups. This one is from Forest and Bird.