Members of Raukūmara Pae Maunga, an iwi-based restoration group working in the Raukūmara ranges, say they are 'gutted” about the death of at least three dogs from eating poisoned possums off the beach.

However despite this unexpected collateral damage, they are delighted with the masses of dead possums resulting from the 1080 drop earlier this month.

Pae Maunga governance team member Ora Barlow and communications and engagement team kaimahi Wiremu Wharepapa are just two of the tangata whenua from Te Whānau a Apanui who have been getting stuck in and doing the mahi to save their ngahere.

Even they are surprised at the number of possum carcasses they have been clearing off the river beds and beaches since the 1080 drop on April 5 to 7.

'I don't think any person realised the mass numbers that have chewed out this Raukūmara. We haven't even been able to go into the bush itself yet since the drop, and the numbers are incredible,” says Wiremu.

The team was alerted on Monday that five dogs at Hawai had died after eating possum carcasses that had come down the river, following high rainfall inland over the weekend, and washed up on beaches.

'Immediately, we went to Hawai where the affected dogs were and visited the whānau,” says Ora.

'We were gutted, to be honest. That was a really sad moment for us and we sat and we shared and apologised. [The whānau] were incredible, actually. We were all happy to move on.”

Ora says she hadn't been able to confirm there were five dogs that had died.

'We saw two dogs [that had died]. We're told there was a third dog. In the last week, we've been trying to track down the owners of the other two dogs that we've been told about, and we haven't been able to.”

Since Monday, there have been teams cleaning dead possums off the beaches between Hawai and Te Kaha at low tide every day.

Ora says over the first three days, they picked up 75 possums.

'And that's not including the very high number we've removed from the riverbed area.

'The key critical focus now is on that clean-up. Looking for weather patterns, coast currents, informing all of our neighbouring iwi, who are informing their people, door knocking, going to see our whānau who have kuri, because that's really where the risk is now, to our fur babies and our fur friends.”

Unfortunately for the programme, the deaths of the dogs have brought out a host of anti-1080 sentiment and misinformation on social media pages.

Both Ora and Wiremu say they once were anti-1080 too, but through educating themselves over the past 10 years they had come to realise that it was the perfect tool for the job.

'[We] would be among the first ones to say that we were anti-1080. I'd be lying about that if I didn't, but now I've got so much trust in this tool," says Wiremu.

'We don't call it a poison. We call it a rongoā, to rub on the puku of the Raukūmara so that it can come back again and live again. It's probably not an easy pill to swallow, and we've all got our differences but that's all kei te pai.”

It is not the only tool in their toolbox however. They also run massive possum trapping operations, along with culling deer from both land and air.

'There's now over 42 jobs that have gone to Te Whanau a Apanui and Ngati Pourou,” says Ora.

Among some of the fears expressed online were that the 1080 drop would contaminate drinking water and kaimoana, which Ms Barlow said was not true at all.

'We've been hearing a lot of Facebook narratives about the mass deaths of aquatic creatures and we are looking for that but we're just not seeing it. We're seeing dead possums but we're not seeing the mass extermination of fish and tuna. We are seeing living tuna in the water.”

She says toxicology reports done on the water as a reassurance to whānau, had come back clear.

'This is a really safe tool around water. All the studies say 1080 does not poison water. It was in all of our engagement. The people who are often on social media won't come to the face-to-face spaces. When we go and korero directly with our whānau, that's where the education really takes place.

'We want to be able to say to our whanau, this is the truth whānau, not what's on social media. Social media is good for some things but sometimes it just amplifies something that's not even real.”

The Raukūmara Pae Maunga group is made up of members of Te Whanau a Apanui, Ngati Porou and the Department of Conservation. They operate together on over 120,000 hectares of conservation park plus private lands on which owners have given consent for operations.

The project was developed due to concerns by both iwi at the devastation being caused by pest animals, including rats, possums, stoats, goats and deer.

'There's a big forest and a lot of things that shouldn't be in there,” says Ora.

'The birdsong is gone. The land is slipping away. The vegetation has deteriorated. I guess it's been happening underneath our noses for the past 50 to 70 years,” says Wiremu. 'We're finally at a point now where we have to do something about it.”

Ora says they were no strangers to things being washed out of the river, including silt, one of the main symptoms that the forest is in need of help.

'The Motu, in its beauty, has told us. It's spitting out that infection.”

Wiremu says a lack of foliage on the trees and young plants in the under-storey had changed the Raukūmaras from a sponge-like rainforest, that soaked up water and released it slowly into waterways, to a place that was eroding into the sea.

'When that water comes down off the hills, it creates momentum. It charges down off the top of the mountains and it takes everything in its path. Trees, big logs, and when they hit the river beds they hit It with force. So you've got these rivers that rise real fast, but they also drop quick.

A few years ago, you had a constant brook running. Now you've got a bank-to-bank river system, or you've got a real shallow slimy, slipperly low river bed.

'By getting rid of the possums and bringing the numbers of deer down, we can get the leaves back onto the trees. We want to create this beautiful future for our mokopuna. We want the birds to come back. We want good clean fresh waterways, and that's going to happen.”

-Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.