Comment: Conservation with Colin Ogle

Two adults with children were fishing recently from rocks near Kowhai Park. All was peaceful ? it looked like exemplary "quality time" with the family.
Suddenly a little pied shag popped up nearby for a breath. The immediate reaction of one child, a lad of maybe 10, was to grab a stone and throw it at the shag.
Adults' reactions? Nil.
Never mind that he missed the shag, it was the lack of parental reaction that made me think about how people regard our indigenous wildlife or, in fact, living things in general.
By simply not discouraging an act that was intended to harm a protected native bird, the parents could be sowing the seeds that grow into worse acts of cruelty.
It's not a big step from throwing stones at birds to actually shooting them.
Some years ago, a teenager living next door to me in the city used a slug gun to shoot a tui out of a flowering kowhai tree (he was caught by a wildlife ranger and prosecuted).
Recent social research has shown that people who commit crimes of violence on other people often have a longer history of being cruel to animals.
Cruelty to native species can be less direct than the examples above.
Several years ago, a group of us arrived at a forest reserve just out of Wanganui where we found two kittens at the entrance.
They were quite tame, and just behind the first tree was a saucer of milk!
Were the "cat dumpers" coming back each day to feed the kittens until they could catch their own food?
I suspect the persons thought of themselves as animal lovers, but what of the future of these cats to the reserve's native birds and other wildlife?
By being a step removed from an action and its consequences on our protected wildlife, adults may justify their activities.
People release unwanted cats 'to be kind', while others release wild pigs and deer into our forest reserves for future hunting.
Clearing native forest and draining wetlands might be accepted farming or forestry practices but they result in losses of wildlife.
Wildlife needs places for breeding, resting and feeding and for mobile animals like birds, these needs are often met in different places during the course of a year.
A new public walking track in prime feeding habitat for wildlife can be a permanent disturbance to native birds.
In doing so, people's self-centred needs have been put before the real needs of native wildlife.