GAME BIRDS & OTHER BIRDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 73, 29 March 1937, Page 8

GAME BIRDS & OTHER BIRDS

"It would appear," states a paragraph in Thursday's issue, "that only those acclimatisation societies which have taken satisfactory steps to provide game have had their shooting licence fees increased by the Gazette just issued." If this is correct, the differentiation seems to be based on information possessed by the Department of Internal Affairs as to which are the societies that have taken the "satisfactory steps" and which are the societies that have not. Such a differentiation raises the question not only of providing game birds but of whether the less efficient societies should be forced into amalgamation with the more efficient. Efficiency is not a matter solely of liberating pheasants and keeping up the stock of game, but a Government which does not hesitate to differentiate in licence fees should not hesitate to take cognisance of the larger issue and to make efficiency .the test of a society's right to survive. Whether a society is considered as a gun club, or as a rod club, or as a protector of indigenous birds, the test is how well the work is done. The sin of trying to increase the price of legal shooting without increasing the number of game birds seems to be exceeded by the sin of taking no action to prevent pigeon-poaching.- The gunmen and the rodmen can always fight for themselves, but the "absolutely protected" birds have no protection save a law that is too often a dead letter.