They shoot keas, don't they?

Forest and Bird, Volume 17, Issue 1, 1 February 1986, Page 5

They shoot keas, don't they?

Editor

Gerard Hutching,

This kea from a Canterbury high country station was discovered by the Wildlife Service in a chained and distressed state at a Greymouth house. The Service cared for it and it was later released into the wild. In May 1985 a New Zealand Herald and Christchurch Press article on Canterbury Castle Hill station runholder Max Smith (and former Waitaki power project chief engineer) caused public outrage throughout New Zealand. "Keas are no friends of high country farmers,"’ he asserts. Max Smith points out a couple of keas in a wire netting cage at the back of the house: "They are our call keas. They call to others which fly down to the house where we shoot them through the window with a .22 rifle, averaging one a week." (NZ Herald, May 28, 1985) Full legal protection for keas would prohibit such appalling indiscriminate slaughter of keas. Such protection deserves public support. However, it would still allow Wildlife staff to control birds in those exceptional circumstances where keas could be proven to damage sheep.