Release Of Game Birds

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31327, 25 March 1967, Page 12

Release Of Game Birds

Sir, —An American friend likened our system of putting duck-shooters in charge of wild-life protection to a band of bank-robbers running the F. 8.1. Unfortunately, the wildlife branch of the Internal Affairs Dept, remains very much a “paper tiger” and seems powerless to stop the continuing senseless release of birds by the Acclimatisation Society. I intend to write to the Secretary of Internal Affairs to ask where these birds are being released and why. Above all, I ask what guarantee we have that some so far undisturbed stretch of

water will not become a slaughter-house. We all have a right to areas of water, not a few sadists.—Yours, etc. D. R. March 23, 1967. Sir, —I am amused at the silence of the Acclimatisation Society on the release of Canada geese, black swan, and pukeko. They seem intent on making a laughing-stock of themselves. In August, 1962, a spokesman for this body, In reply to opposition to the first goose drive at the lake, stated that there had been complaints from land-owners at the lake and from the back country; they had brought considerable pressure to bear. Exactly the same excuse was used to place pukeko on the list. No documentary evidence of any such complaint has been made public and the society cannot supply the names of any farmer who has even made a verbal complaint. In the light of this, is not any move made by the society suspect?—Yours, etc., MALLARD. March 24, 1967.