BIRDS AND FORESTS

Evening Star, Issue 21081, 19 April 1932, Page 7

BIRDS AND FORESTS

VALUE TO NEW ZEALAND PRESERVATION IMPORTANT “It cannot bo too strongly emphasised that the conditions ruling in New Zealand with reference to our flora and fauna are entirely different from and at times at variance with those found in any other part of the world, simply because this country was for ages and ages past cut off from all other large land masses by vast and deep oceans,” stated the report of the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society, presented at the annual meeting of the society at Wellington. “Birds were the chief visitors and inhabitants. Plant-eating animals were non-existent prior to the advent of the pakeha. A forest was thus evolved which had no reason to develop mam-mal-resistant properties, and upon a full realisation of this fact hinges the preservation of many of our native birds, because these forests furnish the food supplies and homes of many birds, beside which they control the conservation of water flow, thus regulating stream-flow and many factors connected with water fowl and marsh-inhabiting birds, not to say anything about the fish inhabitants of our rivers and streams. These forests which are so readily destroyed by plant-eating mammals are really the foundation of the prosperity of New Zealand, as they built the soil on the underlying rock and were eminently adapted by nature to hold it in its place owing to their protecting dense floor-covering of ferns, mosses, etc. Remove these forests from those hilly and mountainous areas which form the greater part of this country, and the result is that our lower fertile valleys become' gradually converted into debris deposits of shingle and rubble released from the higher land. Plant-eating mammals, when in sufficient numbers, quickly destroy the floor-covering of our forests, and every person in New Zealand is now paying and in the future will pay in a greater degree for the past errors in the management of New Zealand s peculiar forests, while _ the bird-lue which was evolved to suit these special forest conditions must automatically perish with our forests and the prosperity of New Zealand. “UNIQUE AND BEAUTIFUL.” “ It will be thus evident to members how they, along with many others in New Zealand, are helping to save New Zealand from man’s errors when they advocate the preservation of our native forests and birds, both of which are unique and so beautiful and attractive, apart from their usefulness, that they should he jealously guarded and encouraged by every New Zealander. “The executive suggests the advisability of all well-wishers of birds and forests joining the Bird Protection Society, in order that we may all work and speak with one voice and one aim. That is the object for which the society was formed. We have the advice and support of some of the world’s foremost authorities on the subjects in which we are interested, and correspond with many organisations similar to ours throughout the civilised world, in order to ascertain the best method of telling the people in simple language the facts ascertained by science on the assumption that, if the people realise the economic value, beauty, and rarity of our forests and birds, these will be saved. “There is nothing intricate in the conservation of these forests and birds which rests largely on a return of all forest reservations to that condition for which most of our native birds were evolved, and upon whose activities in seed distribution, flower pollination, insect control, etc., our_ forests depend. They are interallied with one another, and the prosperity of man in New Zea- “ Some effort has been directed by the Department of Internal Affairs, which undertook to handle the extermination of the deer, but this falls far short of requirements, partly because of the prevailing financial depression, which does not in the least, however, lessen or increase the activities of the destroying animals. The bright spot is that some progress has been made towards securing a profitable price for deer hides.”