STOATS AND WEASELS.

Evening Star, Issue 20591, 17 September 1930, Page 8

STOATS AND WEASELS.

Acclimatisation and its reversal make a complex subject. No animal probably has ever been brought to this country that has not served some useful purpose, though the effects of the introduction of most of them which have been turned loose and left to mcrease and multiply have been so mixed that a final balance between their beneficence and viciousness is made almost impossible. Generally they are good—or harmless —in small numbers and bad in large; good in some environments and bud in others. Since extermination in almost every ease seems to bo impossible, once they have become established, the problem is to limit them to right numbers and right localities. That is the real need in regard to importations which were discussed yesterday by the Otago Council of the Farmers’ Union, on the prompting of a letter from the president of the Associated Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand. The president wanted to know if the union would agree to removal of the protection on stoats, weasels, and ferrets, such removal being sought in the interests of native birds. The bloodthirsty small deer which he enumerated arc death to the mitive birds, which makes their vice. On the other hand, they are death to rabbits and some ocher small birds that prey on crops, which makes a compensating virtue. The president had his own doubts about the merits of the pro-

posai. In some cases, ho observed, it would not bo necessary, since some farmers, knowing nothing of the protection, already offered rewards for the killing of stoats and weasels near their homesteads, their concern being for their chickens. Where the farmers did not want them killed, a general removal of the protection would cause no injury, since they would be unlikely to admit slayers to their property. Presumably there are not enough of these creatures to make a trapping industry for their skins attractive. What is needed is to get rid of them in the forest areas, and the president was not sure that it could be done. Ho asked the council what it thought about It, and the council is consulting its brandies. Fifty years ago there would have been only one opinion. The “ natural enemies ” of the rabbit were then in great request. Sheep farmers first brought pressure to bear on the Government for the introduction of ferrets, and it was a' chief rabbit inspector who pleaded for stoats and weasels. In the course of fifteen months more than a thousand pounds was spent on the introduction of ferrets, the cost of those which survived the voyage working out at £3 2s 7d per head. In his work on naturalisation in New Zealand, the Hon. G. M. Thomson states: “At this period it would seem as if the Government kept a perfect menagerie of these animals.” Stoats and weasels followed, more particularly to Otago. There aro many districts to-day, it was stated at yesterday’s meeting, where stoats and weasels are keeping the rabbits under. The worst time for discouraging them might be now, when the reduced price brought by skins may be a natural inducement for rabbits to increase. The stoat’s skin, if there were more stoats, should be especially valuable. The stoat is the same as the ermine, which has led a humorous versifier to remark that

When Auntie has got just a little more ermine, You can tell her (or not) she is covered with vermin.

The ferret is a relation of the malodorous polecat. As to the power proposed to limit the removal of protection to reserves which birds frequent and rabbits do not, it seems to be very nearly anticipated by an Act of 1903 which states; “The Governor may from time to time, on the petition of any local authority or acclimatisation society, by Order in Council gazetted, declare that weasels, stoats, or any other animal declared under the first-mentioned section to be a natural enemy of the rabbit, and which have since proved to be the enemies of game and poultry, may be killed within any district defined by such order.” A slight extension of that clause, which apparently was discarded when . the law was consolidated, would give all the power required.