CONTROL OF WILD LIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 August 1941, Page 6

CONTROL OF WILD LIFE

PRESENT SYSTEM CRITICISED. NO PARALLEL ELSEWHERE. In a review of control of wild life, Mr G. Stokell, president of the Canterbury Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand, indicates kinks in control by acclimatisation societies. “When we come to examine the constitution and proceedings of acclimatisation societies,” he states, “we find that these bodies are composed of the purchasers of licences to kill either fish or game, that these composite groups of killers elect councils to receive the killing fees and manage affairs generally and that these councils from their own personnel a central association to provide contact with the Government and deal with matters of more than common delicacy. “One wonders, in passing, why the controlling bodies should be of a composite character, instead of the control of fish and that of game being separately administered. Apart from the gratification of the killing instinct, the act of killing fish has little in common with the act of killing game, and an authority in either department of sport is not necessarily an authority in the other. But the most surprising circumstances is that the killers should have control of the animals they kill; that the sole qualification for safeguarding the welfare of wild creatures should be the possession of a desire to kill them as manifested by the purchase of a killing permit. One seeks in vain for a parallel in any other social sphere. “If this principle is a sound one the control of the mineral resources of this country ought to be in the hands of the mining interests that exploit them; the conservation of forests should be left to the sawmillers; and it would require little extension of it to justify the control of wealth being placed in the hands l of the indolent and improvident. Such arangements would approximate the present system of control of sporting animals, where the care of the prey is committed to the tender mercies of the predators.

"Whatever protective influence the licence fee may exercise in its direct application is far outweighed by the destructive effect of its reactions. Open seasons for the taking of game are granted by the Government on the recommendation of acclimatisation societies, without reference to any disinterested authority or scientific body.”