MAN'S DOMINION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 651, 21 December 1951, Page 16

MAN'S DOMINION

by

SUNDOWNER

NOVEMBER 16

WOULD like to think that Eric Parker, editor of the Lonsdale Library, and for more than 20 years editor of the Field, did something useful when he suggested that one way of getting rid of spring traps would-be to sit up all night in a district where traps are

regularly used and describe precisely what has been

heard. Here is a passage from an interview with him in the Countryman: How are we to ‘get public opinion, so strong on the subject of the gin that even the farmers of the West Country, where rabbits do most harm, must give way? I have sometimes thought-indeed, were I younger, 1 would try the experiment myself -that if a writer could spend a night on a Devonshire farm where gins were set regularly and describe in print what he heard from dusk to dawn, the gin would be ended by law tomorrow. Since Parker is now 81 he is free of the suspicion young.men have of old men who engage in recruiting campaigns in war time. But I can’t help feeling that he is a sentimentalist and not a realist. Every farmer who~ uses traps knows what goes on from dusk to dawn, and although sentiment is a stronger weapon in Britain that it is in New Zealand, it is not often strong enough ‘to conquer self-interest. In any case, it is the farmers themselves who have to be turned against trapping to make it disappear, and: this means that they have to find a better weapon or have it found for them. In the meantime, no writer will describe accurately what trapping -means, in the Field or anywhere else, first because no writer can, and in the second place because a writer who could and did would be denounced by two readers in three for trading in and gloating over cruelty.

NOVEMBER 18

Ed bg % | HOPE it will not be supposed that I do not sympathise with Eric Parker’s desire to let the public know whdt trapping means in animal agony.

I know worse things about trapping than Parker

| does or is capable of imagining; but

I have never. seen mountains moved by faith without reinforcement by reason and selfinterest. I go all the way with Parker as a sentimentalist, and a good deal further, since I could never write, edit, encourage, or enjoy some of the strange stuff he has passed through his hands for the. Field and the Lonsdale Library; but I am not sure that I go as far as Professor James Ritchie, of the Natural History Department of the University of Edinburgh, who questions man’s right to dominion over wild animals. Again I quote from an interview in the Countryman: The tegal relationship between man and animals is a curious one, for it would appear that in law man has an absolute dominion over the animals which he owns, and

has the same absolute dominion over wild animals ‘as he has over domestic animalssubject to restrictions imposed on him by the law of trespass, game laws, wild birds protection faws; and the like. This is a point of view very different from that of the naturalist, who regards wild animals as having rights of their own, and indeed some prior claim oyer man to the territory which they occupy. I mean that I can’t go as far as that realistically. I support it all emotionally, but can’t honestly say that I wish the killing of wild animals were legal murder, disturbing them legal trespass. I do wish that inflicting unnecessary pain on them could be regarded, always and everywhere, as legal cruelty, punishable in same way as cruelty to human beings; but if the law is to go further than that, what we call civilisation will crumble in the hands of its protectors. These are deep and dangerous questions which no man can answer in the language of mercy and justice. They can be answered in the language of survival, and most easily in the language of religion. But I can think of no other answers-I mean, of course, just, logical, and humane answers — that would keep the human race alive for three generations. ann ap é

NOVEMBER 19

bd ~ # .s [:LSIE’S interest in her calf lasted 60 hours. It would, of course, revive again if the two were brought together; but hearing it occasionally, and I suppose smelling it, were not sufficient to keep her disturbed after two and a half days of isolation. The calf

was never more than half a chain from her by one

line of approach and a little over a chain by another. But she could not see it. Most of the time, too, a strong wind blew from her to the calf and never from the calf to her. Finally Andy has (for a calf) a high-pitched and (to human ears) a poor carrying voice. I was, however, surprised that the separation was’ accomplished so easily (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) and her normal life restored so quickly. | Last year I let her keep the calf for | a day and a night and then hide it, | which "she did so successfully that I) had to call on Mac to help me to fird | it. But before I looked for the calf I. removed Elsie herself, and then carried the calf to a hide-out over a hundred yards away to which she had no access. Although it bellowed in panic when I hoisted it on to my shoulders, the wind: was then howling through the trees at gale force, and I don’t think Elsie | heard anything else. For two or three days she looked anxiously at intervals | in the direction in which the calf had | first been hidden, and grazed as close to the spot as the fences would allow her to go; but she made no further. fuss by day, and if she called in the. night I did not hear her. I conclude that she is not as strongly maternal as some cows, or is so completely domesticated that it is easier to divert and distract her. Or perhaps we have done to the cows of New Zealand what Hudson said had been done to the cows of England-robbed them of their voices by, taking away the necessity to use-them. (To be continued)