PROTECTION OF BIRDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 8

PROTECTION OF BIRDS.

AND ACCLIMATISATION TOPICS. These acclimatisation societies are a solemn joke. The excuses they put up for gunning the pukeko, for instance, and for swamping our native forests with the wily 'possum. More than one speaker at a recent conference earnestly affirmed that a shooting season for the pukeko— which was draining our fanners of their life blood, per medium of the straw stack —was the best thing that could happen to the birds, because it would teach them to get out and keep out in future and save them from eating the poisoned grain which the chivalrous farmer spread for them. As for the opossum, what if he did eat the young leaves on which the native birds fed? He was really doing the trees good by pruning them! Those examples of A.C. reasoning and the discussion on animals and birds and sanctuaries culminated in a resolution opposing the movement to secure unity of control in bird preservation and cognate matters. The societies are perfectly satisfied with things as they are and consider that_ the Department of Internal Affairs should continue to control the situation. The very fact of the acclimatisation people passing this resolution is to my mind an excellent argument for complete reform of existing conditions. It strengthens the already very strong case for the establishment of a Board of Control which shall exercise oversight over all sanctuaries and forest reserves and over wild life, both indigenous and foreign. The Native Birds Protection Association, which has done splendid work in arousing the public conscience to some sense of its duty to the feathered life of our forests, lias shown good cause why the existing lack of system and coordination should give place to something better adapted to present-day needs. Two or three Government Departments administer the bird sanctuaries and bird protection laws. One body, composed of scientific bird protection and Government representatives is clearly required.' So far, the acclimatisation societies have exercised far too much influence with the Departments of Government in the interests purely of providing something to kill and of exploiting the forests for finance. Indeed, the operations of the societies, with the sole exceptions of the introduction of trout and pheasants, have been detrimental to the interests of the country. Even where the societies did not introduce the creatures themselves they support their protection (opossums, for instance) purely for purposes of revenue. Swans may be mentioned as an example of the misguided zeal for foreign game. The myriads of swans on Lake Ellesinere, in Canterbury, were and are a curse to the farmers around that great lagoon, but the acclimatisation society in that district guarded them as if they were the most precious creatures in existence and even prosecuted people for taking swans' eggs. Yet let a pukeko, starved out of its native swamp by drainage work, pull a few straws out of a wheat stack and there is a howl for its destruction which the societies gladly endorse because it is for Mr. Pukeko's own good! Some of the acclimatisation leaders, seeing the handwriting on the wall, are showing indications of hedging. Nothing, they profess, is nearer their hearts than tho preservation of the native birds. But if they were asked which they would prefer to preserve, the native fantail or the foreign pheasant, we all know what the answer would be. The pheasant, of course, provides excellent sport, and for that reason—but that only—is a desirable immigrant. It can become a nuisance; indeed, it has in some fanning districts in past years. But the little fantail, it has_ been proved, eats more than its own weight of insects in its day's work. For all its fairylike inconsequence of flight and play, it is one of'the busiest benefactors to forest and orchard alike. But it isn't a game bird, and there's the rub. No one will pay the acclimatisation societies a fee to go fantail shooting. Yet in economic value it outweighs all your pheasants and certainly all your deer. ' — J C