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particular, which has recently become enemy number one in New Zealand. 109 In his opinion,
there was no need to introduce these predators in the first place, as rabbits are “much easier
destroyed by shooting, netting, or bagging with ferrets, when the land becomes more closely
settled”. 110 He gave one last impassioned plea before departing New Zealand to save the country
from the plight of these pests:
I protested years ago very strongly against the importation of stoats, weasels and ferrets, and the
turning out of cats in this lovely country to destroy rabbits. The result will be, that when all the
rabbits, native and imported birds and poultry have disappeared, these vermin will attack the
lambs, which are very helpless creatures; and then who is to get rid of these vermin, which
multiply very fast in this mild climate, with plenty of food and shelter. It will be impossible to get
them out of cover. The rabbits only inhabit the open places, but these animals make their
habitations anywhere. They find a shelter in the field, in stone walls and hedges, in hollow trees, in
the forest, in houses, barns and stacks. My readers will pardon me for speaking once more on this
subject, but I think it my duty to do so. If nature wanted such vermin in this country they would be
here, but the greed of man looks often only to the present and takes no account of what the results
will be or the harm he will do in the future. When the land is more settled the rabbits will have to
disappear. I sincerely hope that my theory about these vermin destroying the lambs in time[s] to
come is wrong, but I have strong doubts. 111
This outcome, however, never came to fruition as the native wildlife is still the target of these
predators, more so than the rabbits which spawned their introduction.
Reischek saw himself as a collector of scientific specimens, and distinguished himself
from those hunters who made a trade out of killing birds. It is these reckless individuals whom he
admonishes for acting in a profit-oriented manner outside the principles of science, sport and
sustenance, as a “proper sportsman will not slaughter every creature which comes across his path,
as one man did in [the] Waitakerei [sic] Ranges a few years ago during the shooting season, for
several years making a trade out of it”:
A friend told me he shot seven hundred birds in one season, which were sent in sacks to town for
sale. He went on till the birds got rare, and then he left the district, I suppose, to go on with his
work of extermination somewhere else. […] In some districts the kiwi, kakapo, and other birds are
exterminated, and others nearly so. If they had only been used for scientific purposes or true sport,
or even as subsistence for a hungry man, we should find them still in every district. The New
Zealand birds are naturally tame and slow in their movements; all have not yet learned the danger
of the gun, and they are as in former days when the snare and spear only lurked for them and
demolished but a small number. They can never stand long against firearms, dogs of itinerant
travellers, curs and cats run wild, imported ferrets, stoats, weasels, and innumerable rats which
109
Andreas Reischek, “Notes on the Habits of the Polecat, Ferret, Mongoose, Stoat, and Weasel”, in: TPNZI 18
(1885): 110-12.
110
Andreas Reischek, “Observations on the Habits of New Zealand Birds, their Usefulness or Destructiveness to the
Country”, in: TPNZI 18 (1885): 104.
111
Reischek, Caesar, 31.
247