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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 5

Sir-H. Wendell Endicott has got hold of the wrong end of the right stick, He is rightly concerned about our wild life, but does not seem to be aware that New Zealand has its own beautiful and interesting birds and plants, without deer, chamois, etc. Most of these introduced animals are in any case so well established that it is unlikely they will as

ever be exterminated. Shooting because they have become a pest is necessary; shooting for sport is open to doubt. If they are not kept down as much as possible what remains of New Zealand's forest will be either destroyed (helped by fire and careless milling) or so altered as to lose its present individual character. It was never intended by Nature to support’ browsing animals, There is abundant evidence that deer do damage bush; young trees with all the shoots eaten, older ones with leaves stripped and branches broken. On hill country the effects of pigs and goats are more spectacular, the pig rootings starting small slips, which inevitably grow while animals remain. to trample the soil and destroy young plarits. These things may have no immediate serious effect, but in the slow-growing New Zealand bush they will have for the future if deer and other introduced animals are not checked, The Acclimatisation Societies no doubt pride themselves on having made New Zealand a "sportsman’s paradise" with imported game, but the judgment of the future will be quite. different if New Zealand thereby loses its own wild life.

N.

ATKINSON

(Wellington).