SHAGS AND HAWKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 50, 28 February 1935, Page 17

SHAGS AND HAWKS.

KILLING POLICY. EXTERMINATION CRITICISED. NATURE'S BALANCE. Mr. W. M. Fraser, Whangarei, writes in protest against the extermination of hawks and shags:— According to recent Press reports, the Auckland Acclimatisation Society is determined, with the help of other similar institutions, to pursue the shags to the point of extermination because they are eating imported trout and other fish. At Whangarei the local Acclimatisation Society awards prizes each year to country schools for the greatest tally of hawks' feet, which it is said the school children obtain by means, of trapping. One would think that the production of the dried heads of hawks would suit the case, but then one or two legs of this outlawed bird are often foyid in the steel trap when the bird has rlown after having struggled and twisted for a couple of days or so, and perhaps the advantage of the leg tally, especially in the breeding season, is that if the bird does escape it has been taught a lesson, and not being able to grow now legs, its nestlings will die of starvation and the parent bird suffer a lingering death. Food of Shags. The president of one of the birdkilling societies, in a letter to the Press lately, in justification of their campaign, said that man was given dominion over all other living things and was therefore only acting in accordance with the "great plan" when, in his wisdom, ho destroyed man's enemy, such as hawks and shags. About two years ago, a Government inspector reported to headquarters that at the Kaipara Harbour lie, with his assistants, had shot a large number of shags, and that in the birds' stomachs there were found young flounder, proving beyond doubt the guilt of these pests; and the fear is frequently expressed that if something isn't done soon, flounder and trout, etc., will be a thing of the past.

My object in writing is to protest with all my heart against this insane and cruel business, t am a New Zealander, with many years' experience in the bush, the open country and on the sea, and have lost no opportunity of studying the habits of the various forms of life to be met with in these places; and the conclusions I have arrived at con corning the birds referred to are very definite and agree entirely with what I conceive to be part of Nature's marvellously perfect but mysterious workings. When the great Cook rediscovered this country he found shags and hawks to be very plentiful, particularly the former, and so were other birds, and there were fish galore, including flounder. Now, the shag is a shallow water bird, and its appointed duty is to assist in keeping the various species of fishes with which it associates fit and healthy. Nature in her wisdom did not provide doctors or Plunket Societies to preserve the lives of weaklings, nor did she provide or intend that the useless be kept at the expense of the useful. In large communities of fishes there are generally more hatched than the food supply can support, and this state of affairs usually manifest itself when the fish are about half grown, and then it becomes a ease of the survival of the fittest; but instead of allowing the weak and uuliealthy fish to die and cause pollution, Nature has provided the shag to patrol all shallow waters throughout the world, salt and fresh, and keep the fish healthy by devouring the sick and sluggish members of the various fish communities.

I maintain that our shag will not take a healthy fish that is native to New Zealand waters, and possibly in any ease it could not catch it, nor will it eat a dead one. Of the relationship between the native shags and the imported troul 1. know nothing. I sometimes read, however, of a heavy mortality of fish in the protected trout areas in the Rotorua district, the cause of which apparently cannot be traced by the authorities. My advice is let the shag do the job, and in any case I say that the well-being of our shallow "water fishes, including the eel, is of far mot\ importance to the Dominion from a foo l supply point of view than the protection of imported trout.

Hawks and Rabbits. Before the coming of the white man to the country the hawk lived 011 tnc deserted eggs, young weaklings and 111", sick and old of the very numerous native birds, besides eating various grubs. Now that the native birds are practically gone, and the country is overrun by pests and vermin introduced in many cases by the acclimatisation societies, the hawk has fortunately turned his attention to these strangers, and any observant man on the land where rabbits exist knows that were it not for the hawks the rabbit pest would be very serious indeed. 111 one day I saw two half-grown healthy rabbits taken by these most useful birds.

In conclusion, let me say that it will be an evil clay for New Zealand if sportsmen or others are permitted tL, exterminate either the shags or the liawks, and 1 know that many a court and commission has sat in this country in cases of much less importance than the taking of reliable evidence to prove either the guilt or the innocence of these two outlawed birds.