ANIMALS PROTECTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1922, Page 8

ANIMALS PROTECTION.

LICENSE TO SHOOT NATIVE GAME. BILL IN THE HOUSE. (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) The House of Representatives spent most of, Wednesday afternoon discussing the Animals Protection Bill at the committee stage. The Statutes Revision Committee has inserted in the Bill a provision that native game as well as imported game should be killed under license. Sir Heaton Rhodes, who has charge of the measure, explained that the amendment was not intended to do any injustice to sportsmen. But the committee had felt that some additional check was required upon the killing of native game. The native birds had been greatly reduced in numbers in most parts of the Dominion, and he did not think that sportsmen would object to pay a license fee. The system would place some check upon killing, and it would provide the acclimatisation societies with additional funds, so that they might employ more rangers and make a stronger stand against poaching. The Minister added, in answer to a question put to him by Mr. Young (Waikato), that the new provision would not prevent a farmer from killing native game on his own land without a license. The right of the landowner in that respect was fully protected.

The debate that followed indicated that some members of the Liberal and Labor parties were nervous lest the strengthening of the game laws should deprive the general publie of privileges that they have enjoyed in the past. They suggested that landowners were showing an increasing tendency to reserve for themselves the shooting on their properties, and that the extension of the license system was going to create class distinctions in sport. Several members suggested that landowners ought to be placed on the same footing as others, and should not be allowed to shoot over their own properties unless they had taken out licenses. The weight of opinion in the House obviously was against any amendment of this nature, and the matter was not pressed to a division. The provision inserted by the Statutes Revision Committee * was adopted. A later clause gave Mr. C. E. Statham (Dunedin Central) an opportunity to renew his effort to secure the prohibition .of pigeon-shooting. The Bill as it first ’reached the Elouse proposed that the Government should have power to issue regulations prohibiting or regulating the shooting of pigeons or other birds released from traps. The Statutes Revision Committee, after taking evidence on the point, had struck out the reference to prohibition. Mr. Statham moved to restore .the word, and said that his amendment was to be regarded as an indication that the Government ought to prohibit, what he regarded as a brutal sport. Pigeon-shooting had been prohibited in Britain, and he did not see why it should be tolerated in New Zealand. The killing of tame birds released from traps right under the guns was not R true sport at all. The leader of the Opposition (Mr. Wilford) presented another side of the ease. He sard that the shooting of pigeons from traps was less cruel than the shooting of game birds and animals in the field. The percentage of wounded birds was relatively small? Few of the wounded birds escaped. The House discussed the question quite warmly for half an hour, and then rejected Mr. Statham’s amendment by 33 votes to 21.