Hunters get ready despite calls for ban
Animal rights campaigners are calling for a ban on duck shooting as thousands of hunters gear up for opening weekend.
In the Waikato, 7000 hunters are licensed and raring to go when the 2017 game bird season opens on May 6.
Fish & Game chief executive of the Auckland and Waikato region Ben Wilson said the large amount of water in the region should pay dividends for shooters.
The conditions were ripe for a good breeding season. The long, wet spring meant waterfowl were breeding longer than usual and hunters are optimistic.
SAFE campaigns officer Marianne Macdonald said duck shooting should be banned. New Zealand is lagging behind our trans-Tasman neighbours.
‘‘For so much of the time, this is done for fun,’’ Macdonald said. ‘‘For many people, duck shooting is just going out for fun and blasting away at birds.
‘‘It’s already banned in three Australian states on cruelty grounds and New Zealand is falling behind.’’
Up to one million ducks, geese and swans are killed in the New Zealand game bird shooting season she said, and there is evidence up to 25 percent, around 275,000, of the birds targeted are left injured.
‘‘We’re continuing to focus on educating people on the indiscriminate slaughter that is duck shooting.’’
But Waikato regional councillor and Whaingaroa Harbour Care manager Fred Lichtwark said most game birds were introduced and need to be controlled.
They do enormous damage to the country’s native biodiversity, he said.
‘‘Shooters are playing a vital component in the balance but they are not actually keeping a balance at all because they are not killing enough of them,’’ Lichtwark said.
Four species of duck, black swans, pukeko, pheasant, chukor and quail can be shot during the game bird season.
Auckland and Waikato’s duck shooting season finishes one month after opening on June 5, but hunters can target shelduck for an additional 20 days. Upland game season, like pheasant and quail, comes to an end August 27. Rules vary from region to region.
Grey, black and brown teal and whio or blue duck are protected species.
Canadian geese are no longer listed as a game bird and can be hunted throughout the year but Lichtwark said they need to be controlled.
In a regional council meeting last week, he called for the Regional Pest Management Plan review to look at tougher measures on the introduced bird.
‘‘Canadian geese in particular are destroying really sensitive habitat in the estuaries with all of the seagrass being ripped out,’’ he said.
Seagrass is a vital component of the country’s fish stocks. Meadows of seagrass provide homes to juvenile snapper.
‘‘If there is no seagrass there is no snapper. It is an simple as that.’’
But it doesn’t end there. Opening the belly of a Canadian goose reveals a diet of baby flounder.
‘‘And they are fouling the estuaries to the extent that shellfish are contami-
nated, you can get botulism. It’s heinous. They have to be controlled.’’
Fish & Game rangers will be out during the season, looking for lead shot which is banned for wetland shooting, unpinned guns, fed ponds and for hunters without the correct licences.