THE KEA’S CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 20 April 1929, Page 7

THE KEA’S CRIME

(By J.CJ. in Auckland Star.)

The old controversy about the kea, tlio inou ll tain parrot of the South island, anti its taste for living mutton has been revived in Wellington as the result of a newspaper writer’s defence of the nuicli-iiiseussed bird. Nestor Xotubiiis is outlawed by the Government at the holiest of the sheepowners. The sharp-beaked bandit oT the Alps is being shot out for the sake of the live shillings paid for his head. He is an Ishmaei of birddom: everyone’s hand is against him—or nearly everyone’s. There arc a few who like the kea and who stoutly attack the official policy of offering blood money for a parrot which in its own mountain habitat is a pleasing and amusing member of the too-quiokly vanishing native bird life.

Some figures extracted from the Government Department of Agriculture b.v a writer in the Wellington “Post” show that a ruthless war of extermination is •being waged against the kea. During the last ten years about £7200 has been paid out hv the Government for the slaughter of kens. This means that more than 29,000 have been killed and paid for by the Now Zealand taxpayers, on the excuse that the birds kill sheep. As much as .£l/500 has been paid out in one year. All this for the sake or protecting the flocks of a comparatively few men whose (locks rove the foothills of the Southern Alps. There is no doubt that the kea does attack slieej) on both siiles of the alpine range. The writer of the “Post” article apparently does not believe that the kea inflicts much damage on flocks on the western side of the Alps. There are not many sheep runs there, hut from what some residents far down the West Coast have told me the kea is not altogether guiltless on that slope, of the dividing range. Down at Maintain, near Bruce Day, in South Westland, an old settlor who had been on the coast for forty years I old me he had lost 1/50 sheep the year before my visit, killed by the kens. The birds attacked the sheep very boldly with their great curved beaks. They ton* hole® in the animals’ hacks for the .kidnev fat. and, having feasted on this, they did not trouble about, the rest of the living mutton. The settlor had seen the kens clinging to the sheep’s backs and digging away. Ho shot them whenever lie could; in one dav he killed ten birds.

On tin 1 otlior hand. ninny old "West ('ousters, nml particularly those who nre mountaineers. declare that the kea is not- invariably a sheep biller, and that it does not rove far from its own special haunts. They hold that there is no justification for sinUfjclitori ntc the parrots outside the sheep distriets, and that there is a danger of unsotting the balance of NatuVo hv exterminating a bird which feeds largely on grub's and insects that infest the native hush and the alpine tussock-lands. Tt is contended that much of the abuse of the kea is founded on hearsay and exaggeration of its supposed ravages. '\ he sheepown ops lisivo got tlio Government nuthorities to pay big runs for doing what they, the owners, should do themselves. There is much to he said on both sides, and the precise degree of the hen’s guilt is still unsettled. Certainly it seems carrying the war to undue extremes to allow toe head hunters —most of whom never owned a sheep and have no interest in the war except the live .shillings’ reward—to kill the parrots in the Mount Cook and Franz Josef and Fox glacier re•gions. Here the inquisitive and playful old kea is a wonderful source of interest to travellers and high climbers. It is amusing to see Mr N. Notahilis hopping as fast as he can go over the ice close on the heels of a climber and chattering to himself or calling to his tribe to conic on and sec whatever this two-legged stranger is doing. Hu ides and others who have watched the birds for years say that tliev remain around such places as the Franz Josef and the Fox glaciers. Those districts and the Aorangi and A'Thur’s Piss National Parks arc .sanctuaries for native birds—all except ! the kea. Mv own (million, after seeing and 1 hearing a good deal ol flu* kea on both «ides of the range,and as far south us Otago, is that the parrot should be protected everywhere but on the