KILLING OF KEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1938, Page 10

KILLING OF KEAS

PROTECTORS OF HIGH COUNTRY. “Why should the general taxpayers be ordered to pay £352 by way of bonus for the killing of keas?” asked Mrs Knox Gilmer at a recent meeting of the Executive of the Forest and Bird Protection Society. She was referring to a line in the Government’s Estimates for the current year. Mrs Gilmer said that New Zealanders who had a full knowledge of the kea, one of the most remarkable parrots in the world, believed firmly that it deserved protection, not persecution. The playful, lovable birds were a great attraction for tourists at Mt Cook and at Franz Josef Glacier. Captain E. V. Sanderson stated that occupiers of sub-alpine country in the South Island knew the conditions before they went on the bleak highlands, and they had no right to expect the general public of New Zealand to help them in their campaign against keas, which assisted nature to conserve the surface of steep slopes. In the ordinary course, the parrots helped to distribute the seeds of plants which formed a protective, cover when man and his animals did not interfere with nature’s way. It was well known that runholders, by burning tussocks to promote young growth, had destroyed the water-absorbing mat of withered and growing vegetation —the accumulation of years—and had eventually brought death to tussocks and other plant-life. Thus the ground was prepared for erosion, which threatened the better farming country on the lower levels. The sharp hooves of sheep on the ill-treated highlands helped the rain and the runnels from thaws of snow to work havoc. He felt sure that an intelligent unbiased study of the sub-alpine country would result in a recommendation that’it should be conserved free from sheep or other browsing animals, so that nature, with the aid of man, could restore the protective covering—an insurance policy for the farming lands below. Even if an occasional kea was guilty of chasing a sheep, it could be regarded as a benefactor, because it was necessary from the viewpoint of national welfare, to discourage the running of sheep in the realm of the kea.