'Uncaring governance' in the regions is partly to blame for anti-1080 sentiment, according to a leading environmentalist and author.
Dave Hansford spent more than a year researching and writing 'Protecting Paradise - 1080 and the Fight to Save New Zealand's Wildlife'.
"If you look at where the anti-1080 sentiment burns hottest it's always in the regions, and it's the regions that have probably suffered the most from three decades of post-Rogernomics,"
"They're the people that have seen all their services disappear. They're the ones who have seen all those former employers, the Forest Service, the Ministry of Works, all of those have gone."
Mr Hansford believes the Department of Conservation (DoC) is bearing the brunt of this feeling in the regions.
"There is so much anti-DoC rhetoric and sentiment out there. But when you look around the regions that's probably understandable because they're the last visible face of Government in a lot of those places,"
"1080 has become the totem for a much broader social resistance... to what people see as uncaring governance."
Mr Hansford says the Government needs to make people feel "like they they matter again."
"They need to feel like they're dealing with a Government that actually cares about them and about what happens to them."
He says this could not only help change public perception of 1080 but also other contentious issues.
"If you're going to bring those communities back on board with those broad scale public programmes - and I would suggest this would work for fluidisation and vaccination programmes as well - you could allay a lot of this lack of this lack of trust by showing people you actually had a plan for making their lives better."
DoC is planning its largest ever drop of 1080 to combat the predicted pest population boom next spring.
You can watch Newshub Nation's full investigation into the controversial poison here.
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