BIRD SANCTUARIES.

Southland Times, Issue 19116, 7 December 1923, Page 4

BIRD SANCTUARIES.

The preservation of native bird-life in New Zealand is one worthy of every consideration and promotion. Towards this end the New Zealand Protection Society has lately called attention to the necessity of more sanctuaries for our native birds, mentioning in this connection the natural advantages offered by Stewart Island for such a purpose. Such sanctuaries, the Society contends, should be in the charge of bird-lovers who know how to destroy vermin and who are at least loyal enough to be able to resist collectors’ bribes. Such sanctuaries would be very valuable for saving species, on which subject that noted ornithologist, Mr H. Guthrie-Smith, writes as follows:—“So far the best that has been done towards the conservation of species is but negative. s At the best man has here and there been content not to destroy utterly. What is required is positive work —the elimination of vermin and parasites, the study and augmentation of special supplies of food, the careful reservation of nesting-accommodation.” The writer advocates the permanent reservation of the Westland National Park, of Stewart Island, and of the Sub-Antarctic Islands. Other potential sanctuaries exist in the ranges of the North Island, where extensive regions are quite unfitted for settlement. It is on sanctuaries such as these that it is desirable adequate protection of our avifauna should be given. In its birds each generation has but a life interest; no more than sea or sky do they belong to any period They are property entailed and to be transmitted age to age inviolate. Their annihilation is in very truth a wrong done not to ourselves or in our time alone. Civilisation succeeds civilisation as- do the seasons of our mortal life; cities’ are razed, and on their ruins others rise; knowledge destroyed can be again attained; but the extinction of species is, as Mr Guthrie-Smith points out, an everlasting blank —a loss that time itself cannot repair.