Wanaka and Te Anau Department of Conservation offices will be the hardest hit in the latest round of signalled cutbacks.
A regional breakdown of the proposed job cuts shows the Wanaka Doc office will lose three positions, bringing its full-time equivalent (FTE) staff to 16.4, while Southland's Te Anau office, which already has five vacancies, will lose another five to 48.2 FTE.
Other offices to lose one position each are Alexandra which is already two staff down, Makarora, and Owaka.
In Dunedin, with four vacancies, the remaining 34.8 FTE staff would be reduced to 31, but four new positions would be created for policy and regulatory services.
Offices in Glenorchy (three vacancies), Oamaru and Queenstown (four vacancies) would each gain positions - two, one and one respectively.
Staff numbers would not change in Clyde (3), Taiaroa Head (1.5) and Macraes Flat (3). In Otago, there are 110.7 FTE permanent staff while the proposal is for 107.3 FTEs, including the four policy and regulatory services jobs.
The prospect of three Wanaka Doc jobs being lost has disappointed one of the volunteer groups doing predator control work in the area. John Barlow, of the Diamond Lake predator control group, said the group had a partnership with the department and he was one of its supporters.
''They've had three years of restructuring which must be pretty harrowing on the staff and on their morale.
''It seems to be a pretty trifling sort of thing to be fine-tuning [Doc].''
Mr Barlow said being a conservation volunteer was very satisfying, ''but you just couldn't do it unless you had a central organisation that was able to help you along''. In Southland, Stewart Island's Doc office was expected to lose 0.5 FTEs while Invercargill was to gain two.
In documents released on Doc's website on Thursday, the number of full-time positions in the proposed structure (1219) was 28 more than employed (1191) around the country.
It was also proposing to add 21 positions in its planning and permissions team across the country.
However, it said the planned new structure was very different from the present one and proposed a range of different roles and locations in the department. Once a final structure is agreed, affected staff will have the opportunity to reapply for the new positions.
Doc expects affected staff who might not find a suitable role in the new structure would be eligible for redundancy.
