BUSH AND BIRD LIFE.

Forest and Bird, Issue 31, 1 October 1933, Page 4

BUSH AND BIRD LIFE.

By James Cowan.

Between the two destructive agents in the forests, the bushfeller and the introduced animals, New Zealand’s bush regions are in the gravest danger and are gradually but surely being robbed of their original character of beauty and teeming bird life. This complaint has been made again and again by those who have regard for the preservation of the forest and its value as a protective covering for the land, but it is apparently almost hopeless to rouse the governing authorities of the country to a sense of the urgent need for control and preventive measures. The Urewera Country is only one of many places where immediate care for the standing forest is necessary, not merely in the interest of landscape beauty, but for the sake of the very life of the land. All over this island more and more bush is coming down; there is not only unnecessary timber felling for commercial purposes, but there is absolutely wasteful destruction. There are vast quantities of milled timber on hand; yet we continually hear of more areas being marked for milling, and there is always the excuse of settlement needs for the backblocks man who likes to see “a good burn.”

When the vehicle road was put through the Urewera Country there were those of us who knew that district in its original condition who saw in that road the beginning of the ruin of the forests which should be regarded as a precious sanctuary. Now the fate of that glorious bush and mountain region hangs in the balance. The only method by which the bush which clothes those ranges can be saved is for the State to acquire the rights and compensate the Maori owners. Commercially, that forest is of comparatively small value. If it is felled it will only be burned, for the futile sake of grassing a place which Nature never intended to be stripped of its trees; and is New Zealand to suffer such criminal destruction without an effort to prevent it? The time has come when a forest, whether on Crown or privatelyowned land, must be regarded as a national possession. Legislation to that end is an urgent need. Man is his brother’s keeper here; and every owner of bush land has an obligation to the country. The State must step in, as it has in other countries, and prevent land owners from destroying forest which conserves water supply, prevents disastrous floods, serves as a shelter, holds the soil together, acts as a shield of beauty for the land. This applies not merely to the Urewera, but to the whole country.

In other directions affecting the immediate future of the forest and its life much has been said and written about the destruction caused by deer, but a greater curse to the bush, because more insidious, is the opossum. It is worse than the deer because it cannot be destroyed by attempting to shoot it out, and because its work is not obvious to casual travellers and sportsmen. Old bushmen and rangers know something of the havoc which the opossum makes among the native birds. It lives on exactly the berries and the young leaves that the birds eat, and it destroys nestlings and eggs and in one way and another fatally disturbs the ancient balance of Na-

ture in the bush. But a strong effort is being put forth to make this pest a permanent feature of our forest life. The acclimatisation societies, which have been such a curse to the country, are backed by the Government and commercial interests in their efforts to protect the opossum for the sake of revenue. A miserable excuse for the ruin of the pristine forest life. “Stock more forests” is the cry. If these societies have their way, every tract of bush in the two islands will literally be infested with these foreign animals, as great a pest to the bush as the rabbit has been to the pastoral country. Tens

of thousands of skins are taken every season, and the bush is polluted ■with the remains. In the Wellington district alone it is reported that fifty thousand opossums were trapped during the past winter. The opossum indeed seems to be regarded as a commercially sacred creature, only to be taken in one way. A Wellington magistrate fined a man £lO the other day for poisoning opossums. Those who realise what the opossum hordes mean to the indigenous bush life of the country would be glad to see the whole tribe poisoned and the forest cleansed of its foes. The only bright spot in this sorry condition is the fact that many rats are reported to have been caught in the opossum traps.

Probably free trapping, all the year round, with all protection removed, is the only possible way to clear the bush and save the birds. A very few more years and the mischief will be irreparable.