BIRDS AND VERMIN

Hokitika Guardian, 18 October 1928, Page 7

BIRDS AND VERMIN

PART PLAYED BY RATS

TRAPPERS’ TESTIMONY

(Wellington Post.)

'Hie Chairman of the Wellington A' 1 climatisatioii Society, at its montlily meeting on <)d. 10, stated that he had been in communication with the Department of Agriculture, since the conference of Acclimatisation H-V-ieties and lie believed that if application were made for the removal of protection over weasels and stoats in areas not infested by raibhitk, such as 1 orest blocks, the Department of Agriculture would grant it.

TRAPPERS’ RETITRNS

Mr Tripp said be did not suggest that the protection should be removed in any rabbit-infested district. The natural enemies of native .birds were present in the forests in much larger numbers than bad been thought; this bad been shown by the numbers caught by the opossum trappers. Next year, be hoped, there would be a regulation that all trappers should give a return of the vermin caught in their traps and also of the birds. The secretary of the New Zealand Fur Trappers’ Assoeition had informed him that a fair estimate of the number of rats caught in the Wellington district by trappers in the forests was 33,000, and a fair estimate fo the stoats and weasels 2000. A ranger in the Westland district had told him that the trappers ther e estimated that they had killed ,1500 stoats and weasels and about 3000 rats. The ranger was satisfied that owing to the trapping of the vermin, the native birds were increasing and that very few birds were caught in the traps. “Ferrets were first introduced into New Zealand in the ’sixties, and as they got into the forest areas they started to destroy the native birds. In South Canterbury at the end of the ’eighties the birds started to disappear.

DEPREDATIONS OF VERMIN. “ I have iben in communication with Mr T. N. Broderick, a surveyor, and late Under-Secretary for Lands, and he tells me that when lie went down the Landsborough river in 1891 the stoats and weasels had not found their way over the divide into Westland, and all the native wingless and other Wrds were there, but in 1898 when lie revisited the place the stoats and weasels had got over, and there was hardly a native bird to be seen alive. There wore many dead ones lying about killed bv weasels.

“Mr Guthric-Smith contends that the rat is one of tlie worst enemies of our native (birds because it gets the eggs. Tie says that the stoats • and weasels killed the welcas, the natural enemy of the rats, and now that the wekas are gone the rats have increased enormously. According to Mr Edgar Sfead the stoats do not seem to kill the rats. The opossum trappers prove that Mr Guthrie-Smitli is right when he says that the rats have increased enormously in our bush.”

Mr Tripp read a letter from Mr Herbert Guthrie - Smith, of Tutira, Hawkes Bay, a well-known authority on New" Zealand birds. The following are extracts: —

OPOSSUMS NOT HARMFUL. “ Hitherto I have looked upon the introduction of ‘possum- into our New Zealand bush as a mistake—l thought it would be most difficult to grant trap_ ping licenses and yet prevent trappers carrying pea rifles and guns- This fear has been modified by the regulations controlling opossum trapping, and secondly, by the greater value attaching nowadays to our native birds—not only by the man in the country, hut just as much by the man in the town, for the average ‘townie.’ for tlie first time in the experience of mankind, has been given by cheap transport a share in the beauties of the countryside. More and more the country is being invaded by the town, and though some of them don’t know how to behave yet, there is a hugli percentage at least as intelligent as the average farmer who would scalp lii.s parents for another ten blades of cocksfoot.

TRAPPERS REALLY KEEPERS. “ The "experience 'of the trappers you quote find corroborated from personal knowledge of wild areas in the South Island, and from correspondents so near as Waika remoana. That keepers of the Old Country sort were a necessity, if any of our native birds were to survive, I have often suggested, hut the practical point of how their wages were to be paid was the difficulty—now seemingly it is to be paid by themselves-—a most satisfactory solution. “ Your society’s experience in regard to rats is much the same as mine or Tutira; everywhere they do onerous damage to eggs, young and the old incubating beds. In one of my books I have cited the remarkable fact that in a certain swamp area it was in all cases only near a cottage where cats lived that nests of certain rails were to be found with unbroken eggs. Fatal as eats may be rails, they bad actually become to some degree a protection to these small species—the übiquitous rat had to some extent been scared away or killed. Stoats, 1 hear, from an English shooting and fishing friend, are common in the forest of Waikaiemoa na. I have only came acres stoats in any considerable number in parts of Nelson or in the rabbity riverbeds of South Canterbury. T have been in most of flic wildest, most out of the way spots In New Zealand, and in every one of

them I have found rats doing terrible harm to our native birds. It was with great interest, therefore, that 1 have read the accounts of the weasels, stoats, and rats, incidently killed by opossum trappers. We have been too much inclined to think that all lias been accomplished when an area has been declared a sanctuary, it seems now that possibly some positive benefit, may accrue from the presence of the very opossum to whose introduction I was so adverse. Trapping, like cats, has come to stay, and except in vveka and kiwi areas, must benefit New Zealand av> fauna.” Tlie chairman moved that the protection,be removed from ferrets, stoats and weasels, in the society’s forest areas, and the motion was seconded by Mr E. ,T. C. -Wiflin. Mv W. G. 'Talbot said that a tranner whom he knew well bad told him that lie caught no weasels or stoats in the forest blocks, Ibut on the open fern country, where be caught a number of opossums, lie caught one stoat to every 'four opossums, and also a fair number of cats. He had seen a cat chase and catch a hare in the open.

Tt was stated that stoats killed lambs, hut this, it was pointed out, was a, difficult matter to prove.

Mr O. (L Da,sent said that Mr W. S. Powell, of Hunterville, an honorary ranger, had found twelve lambs in a. night, evidently taken by stoats, all with few incisions in the throat, and was forwarding- a report giving full details. The motion was carried.