GAME BIRDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1938, Page 6

GAME BIRDS

ADDRESS AT ROTARY CLUB. NEED FOR RESERVES FOR DUCKS An address on game birds was given at today’s luncheon of the Masterton Rotary Club by Mr R. H. D. Stidolph, who stressed the need for breeding reserves for ducks if it was hoped to maintain the numbers of these birds for sport. According to reliable reports, ducks were decreasing in many parts of the world and active steps had been taken in some countries, particularly the United States, to set aside areas of swamp lands for the preservation of ducks. New Zealand, he said, had no real policy of game conservation, which was a matter for a national undertaking under the guidance of experts. Unless something were done in that direction a further decrease in the duck population was almost inevitable. Already several species of native duck had disappeared from vast areas. The Maoris in pre-European days had observed a more practical scheme of conservation than was known in New Zealand at the present day and even the Chinese at the time of Marco Polo’s visit to that country, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, were alive to the need of protection of game birds.