ITALY NOT SO BAD.

Forest and Bird, Issue 49, 1 August 1938, Page 2

ITALY NOT SO BAD.

—Sig. Mussolini.

OWL HATRED AND PUKEKO MURDER.

Aviculture (regard for birds) is one of the signs of human culture. A few years ago Italy was well behind, but her cultural advance in the field of bird-protection has been astonishing. It is doubtful whether New Zealand’s progress, in the same period, has been equal. The Italian has had the reputation of being cruel to birds and animals. Perhaps he was. Probably he found some excuse in an ignorance and superstition that have never had any parallel in New Zealand. Superstition, as much as cruelty, impelled Italians to nail owls to the doors of dwellings as “a protection against the evil eye.” But in recent years a law has been passed protecting all nocturnal birds of prey that are useful to Italian agriculture. This protection includes all the owls, migratory or stationary, except one species. Owl-protection against “the evil eye” now costs an Italian peasant a fine of about 1,000 lire. But in New Zealand we still shoot pukekos. We do not pretend that this protects us against evil eyes. We do pretend that it is sporting. And this latter pretence is more grotesque and revolting than anything that can be found in Italian superstition. ; If an artist could present the shooting of confiding pukekos in its true natural colours he would surely kill this “sport” for all time. Pukeko-shooting implies not ignorance and superstition but a lack of the sense of the ridiculous. Faced with a popular benightedness that caused many Italians to believe the owls’ dark haunts to be the region of devils, the Italian Government administered a series of legislative

shocks to this frame of mind, by passing protective laws (fauna and flora) that (according to the Natural Fascist Organisation for the Protection of Animals) compare with any in the world. From a pamphlet of the Organisation we quote: — “With regard to migratory birds, for which our Pensinsula serves as a landing and resting place, the Duce himself has made provision for a safe refuge for them in the Island of Capri, where, according to a Decree issued in 1934, a zone of refuge was established. A word from a poet was enough to move the generous soul of Mussolini. Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor, while in the Island of Capri, wrote his ‘San Michele,’ which achieved an astonishing success throughout the whole world. The appeal made by the writer to the Duce for the birds in the island met with an immediate approval and response. Capri has become a place sacred to wild birds and hunting of all descriptions is forbidden.” Some time ago “Forest and Bird” quoted an English author who deplored that bird-nesting is a national pastime among British youth, more so than among the youth of the “cruel” Continent of Europe. In New Zealand also birdnesting by boys is too much encouraged or condoned. Compare this blemish with a pamphlet issued by a section of the Association of Hunters of Sieva, which “makes an earnest appeal to all schoolmasters to whom is entrusted the education of children. It is necessary that the deplorable habit of bird-nesting should be stopped by close supervision, as, in addition to being an offence against the humanitarian sen-

timents of a civilised people, it is most harmful to agriculture, as the birds—especially in the nesting seasonfeed their young on larvae and insects injurious to plants. Parents should remember that the law holds them responsible for offences committed by children under age.” So there is something to be learned from Italy, from a people which, starting in superstition and in a poverty that made the taking of bird-life more excusable than the shooting of non-game birds for “sport,” has evolved in a few years a useful body of animal-protective laws, and a new and truly cultural attitude to human relationship with wild life. “PROTECTION OF ANIMALS IN ITALY.” “There reigns in Creation an admirable harmony and a perfection of order whereby all creatures are subject, to man so that they may serve him as a sovereign in the attainment of his ultimate ends and under the guidance of his intelligence.

But man upsets this admirable order when on the one hand he casts down his royal crown of superiority before the feet of inferior beings, devoting to them senseless affection, or when on the other hand he exercises over them a tyrannical rule subjecting them to acts of barbarous cruelty and destruction. Among the various inferior beings, the Church has always given a special place of honour to the birds of the air, which are so useful to agriculture, and at the same time appear the best comforters to man wandering through this vale of tears, and which more than all other beings raise him to the thought of God the Creator, by teaching him to detach himself from earthly burdens and to reflect on their flight as suggestive of the coming flight to Heaven.”—Giuseppe Orlando. “Consideration for the life of animals is one of the noblest characteristics of a country.”