Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 157
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
Duck shooting is upon us once more and being celebrated in
the media, but not here, where we register our disgust and disquiet at the way
human beings have treated and continue to treat animals.
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| 1920's - killing on this scale of the native parera duck lead to the introduction of mallards from the US which interbred with the native duck which is now critically endangered. |
Following is a vivid account of what it means to be a wetland bird at a dunelake about 15 kms north of
here at the present moment. It is especially relevant
now the expressway has destroyed our Raumati Beach dunelake and the rich native
waterbird life that used to live here.
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| Critically endangered Parera |
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| Mallard Parera hybrid (orange legs) |
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| Mallard pair |
Duck shooting opening day in Te Hapua Rd is a
cacophony of barking dogs, neighing horses, squawking pukekos and shot gun
explosions. Ducks drop onto the surrounding properties, some maimed and
flailing and all birdlife makes an exodus of flight and fear.
The first weekend of duckshooting is
frenetically embraced by ‘commando looking’ fancy dress individuals. They sit
in the dark in camouflaged mai-mais waiting for the dawn assault.
The ducks don’t have calendars for this
onslaught which can only be described as wetland terrorism. The result is that
all pond and swamp wildlife disappears along with the ducks. The frogs (a
feature of Te Hapua and declining worldwide) have habitats disrupted as the
guys and dogs trawl the landscape to pick up shot ducks.
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| Around 6% of these protected Grey Teal are shot during the killing season. |
The Te Hapua Wetland is one of 3 percent of
coastal wetlands left in NZ. Several properties share part of it. 90% of owners
have placed QEII Open Space covenants on their portion. All have embraced
wetland restoration to encourage the conservation of wildlife reliant on
wetland habitats for survival.
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| Diving underwater doesn't stop these scaup from being shot at by triger happy New Zealanders. |
I am appalled at this antithesis of the majority
aims of conserving and protecting our unique environment. Duck shooting is
cruel and totally inappropriate in the Te Hapua environment and should be
banned throughout NZ.
There is a astonishment over here at the extreme behaviour
of Americans with their NRA and their firearms fetish; but are we any different?
We don’t think so.
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| Paradise Ducks are also among the victims. |
This of course, is simply one arm of the human onslaught upon
animal lives. A book that recounts the awakening of one scientist to what he
was doing to animals in his own lab in using the scientific method to progress
his own career, is John Gluck’s - Voracious
Science and Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist’s Ethical Journey. There is something desperately wrong with
a scientific imagination that can divorce itself so readily from the suffering it is
inflicting, so please be warned, this is not a feel-good read. And yet, even should
they stop inflicting harm on these ‘higher’ animals, that still leaves the rest of the
animal kingdom for them to eviserate.
Track we were listening too while posting this was the shrill, peppery, irresistibly
persuasive voice of Melanie Safka - Lay Down
Some came to sing
Some came to pray
Some came to keep
the dark away
