NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 171, 22 October 1941, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

KEEN INTEREST OF WORLD'S

SCIENTISTS

"ZOOLOGICAL MISSING LTNKS"

Distinguished scientists in Creat Britain and America have declared that New Zealanders have a duty to the whole world in saving certain birds from extinction. Some good comment on that subject was given by H. Barraelough Fell in the English magazine Nature. "New Zealand has provided biological science with the classical and most striking case of the effects upon a fauna of prolonged isolation," he wrote. "For an immense period of time it has remained a sanctuary for archaic types. The facts about the kiwis, ground parrots, wekas and other flightless birds are quoted in perhaps every zoological course in the universities of the world. Yet, these very animals srt important to science are now in the gravest danger of becoming extinct like the giant eagles and moas before them. The aid of zoologists in Britain and elsewhere is urgently needed to support the efforts being made by New Zealand workers to bring about reforms to save these animals, which, once lost, will never be known again. It is insufficient to have passed laws purporting to> 'protect' them, when inadequate wild-life administration is available to enforce the laws. Active measures must be taken as soon as possible to destroy the complex of introduced pests which have ousted, or actually attacked, the defenceless native species. The problem is of the utmost importance, and Ave owe it to' future generations, and especially to future biologists, not only in New Zealand but also throughout the rest of the world, to solve it now."