Environmental advocacy group Forest and Bird is now pleading with the Government and councils to increase their 1080 rat control programmes, as New Zealand experiences its worst rat plague in decades.
The worst of the "mega mast event" is yet to come, the group warns, with an infestation of stoats expected next.
Forest and Bird Northland Conservation Advocate Dean Baigent Mercer said this year's mast is "unprecedented in my lifetime".
"It was triggered in the spring last year when lots of different species of native plants started having very heavy flowering," Mr Baigent Mercer said on TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning.
"All the way through, they've been flowering, then the seed came ready from February, and so there's been a lot of food in the forest which the rats have been eating rather than the native birds. And so the rat numbers have been exploding and the rat plague is throughout the country now, and soon to follow will be the stoat plague as they feed on the rats and their numbers build."
He said the increase in rat and stoat numbers could be disastrous for native birds "as it gets colder and there's less food availability".
TVNZ's Sunday looked at the issue in-depth last week .
The Department of Conservation, he said, "is in this really serious and difficult situation about which areas they will save and which areas are sacrificed".
"There will actually be localised extinctions this year, like what happened in 1991 when mohua, the little bird on the $100 note, became extinct at the top of the South Island during on of these events," Mr Baigent Mercer added.
Seed levels are at their highest in 40 years, meaning pest populations will explode if nothing’s done.
He said some of the areas greatly affected by the rat plague are in northwest Nelson, the Kahurangi area, and Fiordland, but there has also been "very, very intense beach seeding over the last six months" in large parts of the South Island.
"DOC has been keeping a very close eye on that and the numbers of rats and stoats are just climbing astronomically," he said.
While DOC is "going to do a million hectares of aerial pest control, which is more than ever before", Forest and Bird is now calling for the Government to increase its rat control programmes.
"The mast is so intense and over such great areas that it's not going to save every place," he said.
Mr Baigent Mercer is also calling for "community groups and councils to get on board and knock down rats and stoats as much as they can in this next period".
While 1080 is contentious, having led to protests and an $11 million funding boost for DOC to protect their staff, he said "contentious does not mean it's not successful".
"It's extremely successful because rats and possums eat the 1080 baits, and then as they wobble back to their dens to die, they're attacked by stoats, ferrets, weasels and feral cats, so it's the best knockdown you can get over massive areas in a three-day period," he said.
While hunters and dog walkers may be against its use over concerns of its toxicity, Mr Baigent Mercer said we "have to compromise" to save the forest and the country's wildlife.
"We have to compromise, and that is to keep dogs out of those areas where 1080 is used – which is a really easy thing to do – and for hunters to get in there and hunt hard - pigs and so forth - before 1080 is used. Fill the freezers, fill your nan's, fill your whānau's before it hits that period where you’re able to hunt again."
He said while it's "very clear" that the Government has understood the serious nature of the situation, community groups and councils must "do whatever they can as well on top of the resources that are already there".
"This is unprecedented in my lifetime," he said. "This is serious stuff."
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