GREAT CHANGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 126, 31 May 1939, Page 17

GREAT CHANGES.

CONTROL IN FUTURE.

FISH AND GAME IN N.Z. SPORTSMAN'S FORECAST. (From Our Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The declaration that everyone who gave the matter any consideration must be prepared for great changes in wild life administration was made by the chairman of the council of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society, Dr. G. F. Anson, at the annual meeting. He expressed the hope that these changes would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary and with the full support of all sportsmen.

"All wild life control will bo vested in a non-political board on which fishing and shooting interests will be <?iven adequate representation," said Dr. Anson in his prophecy of the situation 10 years hence.

Tourist Attraction. "Both fishing and shooting will cost vastly more than they io now. However, some contribution will be made by the Government in virtue of an appreciation of the tourist attractions of sport which will slightly reduce the sum that each individual sportsman would otherwise have to find.

"The landowner will be recognised as a prime factor in administration, and it will have been realised that it is by his efforts alone that pests die and game lives, and as a coroliary we shall have granted him a financial interest in the sporting rights of his property. .Suppression of illegal shooting anrl fishing and the proper economic control of the intensity of legal shooting and fishing will have been found to be possible only by the interested landowner.

"The periods during which we may lawfully take fish and game will have been much reduced—it may even be davs where we now have weeks, vide the regulations in some States of America.

Banning of Decoys. "The mass massacre of ducks on certain days of the year will be a thing of the distant past and will probably have been stopped by the banning of dccoj's. The Mallard duck will have engendered a more sportinar type of shooting— 'flighting' and shooting over dogs will have shown the true charms of 'wild iowling.' '"Sanctuaries will have taken on a new significance. Game and fish rearing will be carried on in suitable large areas— sanctuaries by law and controlled, ranged and administered by resident experts who make it their life work. "f hope that the wortliv efforts of tho*e who have done such sterling work mi the past will "not be overshadowed by those who may take credit for all the reforms," Dr. Anson said.