PROTECTED NATIVE BIRDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 24 March 1928, Page 12

PROTECTED NATIVE BIRDS.

SOME OF THE RAREST.

The Animals Protection Act, 1921-22, contains a list of the native birds which are absolutely protected. This includes some of the rarest and also most economically valuable birds. A progress report of the New Zealand Native Birds Protection Society points out: —

"The Act does not, however, state definitely whose business it is to enforce the conditions, and we have been unable so far to fix the responsibility. The Department on which responsibility falls primarily has no apparent means of checking poaching and other breaches of the Act with reference to these absolutely protected birds. Further, all the income from wild life sources appears to bag set aside in the interests of gamebird and fish conservation, excepting a half share of opossum skin royalties allocated to the State Forest Service for the purpose of destroying goats, deer, etc. This latter, now amounting to a large sum, awaits utilisation. Our most valuable birds are thus left out in the cold. The State Forest Service, so far as their special reservations are concerned, some acclimatisation societies, and occasionally the police interest themselves, but the whole matter of enforcing the conditions of the Act, 6o far as these specially listed birds are concerned, appears extremely vague and certainly requires elucidation, as the present state of affairs is not conducive to the conservation of native birds, other than native game birds, and to the enforcement of the Act so far as they are concerned. Moreover, conservation can never be effective unless administered by those possessing a forest and nature sense in addition to a practical knowledge gained by personal contact."