NATIVE BIRDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 456, 11 September 1928, Page 10

NATIVE BIRDS

PROTECTION for native birds was the keynote of the president’s speech at the opening of a conference of the New Zealand Acclimatisation Societies in Wellington. His statement that native birds are holding their own perhaps needs some modification; but it is encouraging, and still more So is the fact he mentions that “in some cases” they are “on the increase.”

The president, Mr. L. O. H. Tripp, gives a piece of advice which both the State and private planters should remember and adopt. Whenever a plantation of trees is established, large or small, there is an opportunity of fostering native bird life. Flowers and berry-bearing trees and the birds which thrive on them are not generally the concern of tree-planters; but afforestation on the grand scale or the quite small would be none the worse if provision were made for New Zealand’s birds, here and th<?r Perhaps it is not easy to express in entirely national language why the disappearance or rarity of many New Zealand birds is to be regretted; but he must be a curious person, whether a scientist or quite unscientific in his love of birds, who does not admit the regret and would not be glad to see them return to their old dominion. It is no small part of the acclimatisation societies’ service that they help to show how those that still can may be encouraged to do so.