FISH AND GAME

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 224, 20 June 1939, Page 5

FISH AND GAME

New Administration System Suggested

Changes which he felt were fast becoming necessary in the system of administration of the trout fisheries, game and wild-life were referred to yesterday by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Parry. He said that New Zealand must have a reconstruction of its system of conservation, and a national policy with one guiding author“It seems to me now that to place our dependence for the future maintenance and success of fishing and game shooting on licence fees is but courting disaster,” said Mr. Parry. “It will be patent to most sportsmen of the rod and gun that if the income from licence fees was sufficient for the building up and conservation of the sport there would be no need today for our concern for the future. I regret having the. opinion that all the natural advantages we have had in the past with fish and game have now gone.” The Minister said that there was tiie question to be considered of facing up to the exigencies of the position and the apparent necessity felt in many quarters of setting up a department, with a trained commissioner who not only possessed a scientific but practical knowledge of the work. A department of that character could make use of biological research institutions and of voluntary advisory assistance in carrying on all phases of wild life and fresh and salt-water fisheries. “There are greater facilities now than formerly to bring anglers and shooters in quicker reach of fishing and shooting,” said the Minister. “With the natural resources and food supplies becoming less and less, we are forced to admit that there are serious problems to be solved. .More and more the native bush- is being destroyed, and with it goes tiie food supplies of the native birds. Strong and serious in the place of the bush comes erosion, which; fills our rivers and streams with silt, ruining the natural food supply of the fish, beside causing great interference in the natural habits of spawning fish. lam convinced we can retrieve our position of action is taken along proper lines.”