WILD LIFE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 115, 12 April 1933, Page 6

WILD LIFE.

In many countries energetic measures are being taken to preserve wild" life before it vanishes. The valuable work of the Bird Protection Society in this country is well and favourably known. It is educating New Zealanders to a full realisation of the remarkably beautiful birds with which Nature adorned the countryside, the hills and valleys, and the lakes and swamps. But year by year it has to contend with poachers and other vandals who, regardless of the law, make conservation a most difficult matter. The Society has placed on record the “wholesale shooting of godwits, stilts (a protected species), and any sea bird available from motor cars on the Ninety Mile Beach, despite the recent regulation prohibiting shooting from motor cars. On Stewart Island,” it adds, “poaching and the disposal of the proceeds is reported, while in the more northern districts pigeons and kiwis are still being illegally killed in numbers.” Senseless practices at the beginning of the century which reduced native bird life to a fraction of its previous numbers still continue. Theu the forest birds, driven from their refuge as the trees fell before the colonist’s axe, were slaughtered. Some people did observe strictly the sportsman’s code, but huge quantities of feathered game were the victims of a lust to kill. Writing of man’s appearance in tins planet, Professor J. 11. Bradley Has said: “There came a creature who killed as no animal had ever killed before. He killed with a new ingenuity, not only for food and for fur to cover his naked body, but for hate and for fun. He has already reduced the ranks of almost all other mammals. For a whim he annihilated the bison, and he continues to murder countless numbers of furred mammals merely because he fancies their skins around his neck, even in the heat of the summer. The end of the present century will see him nearly alone in a world of his own making. Only those mammals that his needs or his caprices shall favour will be allowed the pursuit of happiness—within the limits he shall set.” This is an indictment of what has happened in New Zealand, but, as in other countries, corrective agencies are at work to make amends. We have our sanctuaries for the preservation of wild life, just as in Africa and India there are similar areas for the wild beasts which would otherwise become extinct. It is to be regretted, therefore, that defiance of the law undoes much of the good work of humane societies. This week the Council of the North Island Motor Union was invited to co-operate with the Wild Life Council in providing an organisation to preserve the Dominion’s wild life, and though a delegate urged that an active interest in the movement should be taken by motorists, because of illicit shooting from motor cars, and sympathy was declared by others, it was held to be outside the scope of the Union. If, however, what remains of our wild life is to be preserved, for species once extinct never return, there must be whole-hearted co-operation with these bodies. Education must continue until the laws are strictly observed, and shooting takes place only within the areas and seasons permitted.