The Department of Conservation says it's not good enough that more and more of its workers are being threatened and assaulted.

There have been 205 incidents since the start of this year - 55 were serious threats and two were assaults.

DOC deputy director general Karen Jones told Mike Hosking most of them are to do with 1080, but others are around whitebait operations or the culling of introduced animals.

“We have had our staff verbally assaulted and spat on this year, along with notes on cars and horrible commentary online.”

Jone says most of the threats are from anti-1080 activists but there are other motivations.

"For example, we often do operations to regulate whitebait, which some individuals are strongly against."