ADVERTISEMENT FOR KEAS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25589, 2 September 1948, Page 4

ADVERTISEMENT FOR KEAS

COMMENT BY MR E. F STEAD “ONLY WANTED TO SEND OVERSEAS” An allegation that the Auckland Zoo wanted keas to send overseas, where they would “eventually die in misery,” was madq yesterday by Mr Edgar F. Stead, the well-known Christchurch ornithologist. Mr Stead was asked to comment on an advertisement inserted in yesterday’s issue of “The Press” by the Auckland City Council, stating that two dozen keas were urgently wanted, and that £5 a bird would be paid by the council. “Nothing of the sort,” was Mr Stead’s reply when it was suggested to him that the zoo might want the birds to add to its own collection; “It is obvious that they are to be used solely for purposes of exchange. The kea—as he price offered by the city council indicates—has become quite an article of commerce for the zoo.” The kea, said Mr Stead, was not an easy bird to keep in captivity. It was very susceptible to a disease which was one of the pneumonic group, and, when it was removed from the high altitudes where- it Jived, its life could generally be counted in months. The kea in its natural habitat, said Mr Stead, built up resistance to the disease. “They can live at 1300 or 1400 feet in circumstances in which they would survive only -a few months at lower levels. I have seen them in the hills in the filthiest little hovels round homesteads. They are used as callbirds, so that the keas attracted by them can be destroyed. “Many years ago I sent seven, keas to the London Zoo, and after 12 or 14 months every one was dead from this fever they are so liable to contract,” said Mr Stead. Some keas sent to San Francisco had died in a few years. The only keas he had heard of which had been successfully kept in captivity overseas had been sent to England many years ago. They had been sent to a private individual, who had even managed to breed them. Quite a few keas were sent by the Auckland Zoo to the Berlin Zoo not long after the first World War, said Mr Stead. The Berlin Zoo authorities had said that they were the chief attraction in the zoo. “In proper circumstances they are extremely engaging birds,” said Mr Stead. “The Auckland Zoo can get a very high price in exchange for the birds. They do not care where they send them, as long as they get the exchange. I think the Auckland Zoo is taking a grossly material view of the situation, without any regard for the birds. Whatever is thought of the keas in this country, they should not be sent to a climate that must inevitably result in their eventual death in misery. ’ The price on their head in New Zealand is justifiable compared with sending them to a foreign climate.”