The cause of death of six kea found near Wanaka recently will probably not be known until next week.
They were discovered following a Department of Conservation operation in the Matukituki Valley.
They were sent to Wildbase at Massey University and Maanaki Whenua Landcare Research for post-mortem and toxicology testing.
Doc had hoped to have the results yesterday but threats director Amber Bill said they had not arrived and she understood Doc was not likely to receive them until later next week.
Ms Bill said Doc had previously done some work to develop a repellent for kea but a major challenge was that the use of repellent in cereal baits could also cause predators to avoid baits.
"Use of a non-toxic aversion bait containing the bird repellent anthraquinone, and tahr carcasses as a more attractive preferred food source, were trialled in the Zero Invasive Predators project to remove predators from the Perth valley in South Westland last year with some success," she said.
"These methods would need more research before Doc could use them in standard predator control operations."
Published research on kea survival through aerial 1080 predator control operations showed the risk of 1080 to kea in remote areas was low but increased markedly with birds that learned to scavenge for human food.
Ms Bill said Doc was currently "scoping social science research to inform a public campaign to discourage people from feeding kea and interaction that could lead to scrounging behaviour".
The aim of this work was to prevent kea from losing their innately cautious behaviour towards novel foods, which generally kept them at low risk during 1080 operations, she said.
