EXTINCTION OF NATIVE GAME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12834, 6 April 1905, Page 6

EXTINCTION OF NATIVE GAME.

RAVAGES OF STOATS AND WEASELS.

. PREFER BIRDS TO RABBITS.

[BY TELEGRAPH.OWN' COREKsrONDENT.]

Dunedin, Wednesday.

The extraordinary increase in the number of .stoats and weasels during the past few years has led a number of people to believe that the extinction of native game in tho southern portion of the colony is now not very far off. Mr. David Russell, secretary of the Otago Acclimatisation. Society, in the course of an interview, placed the time at five or six years hence. He attributed tho disappearance of many native birds mainly to the ravages of imported vermin, and stated that stoats and weasels were now in the heart of the bush in large numbers, where there was no other food for them bub birds. It is a well-known fact that the rabbits do not penetrate the bush to any distance, although they are usually numerous enough on the outskirts. The stoat and weasel, however, prefer bird to rabbit, and are to be found in the highest trees in the bush. " To show you how numerous they are," said Mr. Russell, "take the Tapanui or the Tokomairiro districts. There is not a mouse or a rat to bo got in the stacks, and yet. in almost every stack where the weasels and stoats make their home the farmers will tell you there is a big accumulation of birds' feathers.'' "Is there any means of gelling rid of the vermin?'' Mr. Russell was asked. He replied: Now, that is the point. I do not know of any. Stoats and weasels are quite different in their ways from the ferier. The ferret is quite easily poisoned, and it can bo done simply by putting strychnine into a dead carcase: but the weasel will . not take dead meat, and he kills to eat. It i* very rarely that he eats anything lie does not kill. (lamekeepers in England get them by trapping, bin in the Old Country every man's hand is against them, and on the large estates the junior gamekeeper does practically nothing else but wage war against vermin. 1 think they will ultimately exterminate the rabbits, but they will kill out our birds first. Weasels are fonder of feathers than fur, and they never touched the rabbit till they had killed out the Maori hens: but in some dis I rids they have killed out the rabbits too." Asked to mention one. Mr. Russell instanced Waipahi, and said. "1 put down the absence of rabbits about Waipahi almost entirely to the weasel*. In Central Otage there are an enormous number of weasels, and two men I know, who went out rabbit shooting counted 170 in one place at one time. They may have been exaggerated, but I hereby mention it to show you how they have increased in Central Otago. Ai the present time a man won't cam]) ant alone on account of the weasels, and cases have occurred where a number of them have succeeded in killing a sheep." Mi-. Russell also stated that he knew of an instance where the weasels had been particularly destructive of small birds, and in his opinion nothing can lie done to check the vermin till they starve themselves out by killing all the game and rabbits in the count For this reason Mr. Russell is inclined'to think that while shnoiists undoubtedly have a great deal to do with the gradual 'extinction of native birds, they might just as well get them as the stoats and weasels. He is quite convinced that our birds are doomed, and that after them the rabbit. In future years, when the weasels and stoats have * exhausted their means of subsistence it may be possible to do something in the way of introducing game to the colony.