THE COLLECTOR’S TOLL

Forest and Bird, Issue 42, 1 November 1936, Page 14

THE COLLECTOR’S TOLL

IT FALLS ON THE RARE SPECIES.

WHEN Parliament and the Government put a cordon of absolute protection round most of the New Zealand birds, a hole was left in the fence. The hole is called collectors’ permits.

While other people who take birds or eggs or nests are law-breakers acting at their own risk, a collector with a permit has a legal exemption. It is true that he remains on the side of the law only so long as he observes the restrictions in his permit limiting the species and numbers that he may take. But he is in a better position, than is the ordinary law-breaker, to violate the Act, because the permit shields him. He may exceed it with more immunity than would be enjoyed by a man who collects without a permit, because the unpermitted person is clearly in the wrong from the jump.

SUPERVISION IS NECESSARY.

Any person desirous of taking birds or eggs for which no permit is obtainable could do so more safely if he possessed a permit covering other birds and eggs than if he possessed no permit at all.

This being so, an administering authority charged with the trust of bird protection must of necessity look with jealousy on every permit it issues. A permit in itself is a double-edged weapon. The personal factor of the collector may count, but cannot alter in fact that a birdcollector with a permit is a person whose scrupulous observance of permit-conditions cannot be taken for granted.

The most eminent and favourable birdcollector is no more entitled to pass without scrutiny than an eminent accountant is entitled to escape the audit.

g VIGILANT RANGING IN CANADA. In Canada a collector is accompanied by a ranger, or the birds are collected for him by the authorities. In New Zealand he collects under no constant Government supervision. His honour is relied on. But it is not fair to collectors that their honour should be relied on, nor is it fair to the birds.

No doubt it will be objected that the cost of sending a ranger or supervisor to see that a permit is complied with would be too great. It is too great when permits are too freely granted. The remedy is to reduce permits to cases of special scientific merit. The number of these is not so great as to make supervision too cumbersome or too expensive. Moreover, why should not the person or organisation that secures advantage from the permit pay for the cost of the supervision? Not every proposal to gather specimens to exchange for foreign specimens should be granted, whether in the name of public interest, or private interest, or scientific inquiry. No one should be allowed to assume that a permit is to be taken for granted.

A TRAFFIC IN PROTECTED BIRDS.

Bird skins, birds’ eggs, etc., have a scientific exchange value and a money exchange value. That there is a traffic resting on money is indicated by the fact that New Zealand protected birds, including parakeets, can be bought in Sydney; and Australian • protected birds can be bought in New Zealand. To say that, is not to say that they were taken on collectors’ permits. But it is a reason for specially supervising collectors and for reducing their permits to a minimum.

Someone may retort: “But poachers without

permits take and sell a hundred birds for every dozen taken, legally or illegally, by collectors.” Even if this be true, the collector’s proportion of responsibility is not merely the proportion of birds he takes to the aggregate of birds taken. The collector is proportionately a much more dangerous factor, because, in his operations among protected New Zealand birds, he is attracted irresistibly to those that are fewest, rarest, and most in demand. A huia (if there is one) is in more danger from one collector than from all the pigeon pot-hunters in New Zealand, who probably number hundreds. The collector is dangerous because he is concerned with the weakest link in the chain of bird life, such a link as is represented by a rare and near-passing species.

NO HELP FOR PRIVATE COLLECTIONS.

No collector should be turned out with a permit in the haunts of the rarest species and treated as an honourable man. If he be an honourable man, he will not expect to be taken on trust. Because he will know that not everybody can be taken on trust, and that there should be uniformity of treatment. The keynote of Government policy should be no more help for private collections, and ex-

treme strictness in collecting for museum and public purposes. The ramifications of commercial collecting and the taxidermist business would be brought to light if the Government gave half as much attention to the bird-skin traffic as it gives to opossum-skins.

The mentality of the museum activities may be scientific; but the mentality of private activities is not scientific, and in most cases is purely commercial. No scientist is on the edge of a discovery that is held up for lack of the skin or the egg of a bird.

THE ATTACK ON RARE BIRDS.

The general law-breaking pothunter is impressive, because of the numbers of birds he takes, but the scarcity of birds of a species tends to discourage him. The same scarcity whets the collector’s interest. His share in the problem is not numerical, but relative, not a matter of quantity, but of quality. If the Government is minded to create a staff of rangers under the Department of Internal Affairs, supervision of permits should be its first duty. If the Government is not so minded, it should seriously consider whether it is warranted in granting collecting permits at all.