A LITTLE ESSAY ON VERMIN.
(By W. L. McAtee, in Charge Food Habits Research, Biological Survey, Washington, D.C.)
Conservationists may the more emphatically insist on cessation of the general application of vermin-control because of the non-essential character of the interests alleged to be damaged. Trout-fishing is not essential, Quail-shooting is not necessary, and so on down the line. No longer does the argument apply that taking game is necessary to supply food. A standing trouble of the world in general is an excess of food. Moreover, game as a source of food is insignificant; if all of it could be made available, it would not suffice our population for a single day. Further, there is certainly no reason that sport should be so nursed and subsidised as to yield the very utmost in game brought to bag. There is, to state it simply, no necessity or urgency about the matter at all. Sport is a luxury and cannot be considered for one moment as giving to its devotees any right of harrying any and all forms of wild life considered inimical.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/FORBI19320301.2.7
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Forest and Bird, Issue 26, 1 March 1932, Page 2
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181A LITTLE ESSAY ON VERMIN. Forest and Bird, Issue 26, 1 March 1932, Page 2
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