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watch them day and night, destroying their eggs and their young. The birds that are not destroyed
leave their beloved habitats in despair and seek those beautiful and secluded wilds away from their
enemies, where nature receives them smiling, and they can make a fresh home until so-called
civilisation exterminates them, when kiwi and kakapo will be a thing of the past, like the moa and
others. 112
Interestingly, however, the above statement reveals a degree of naivety in his belief that true
‘scientific’ collectors of specimens and game hunters could not have had a significant impact on
the depopulation of species, especially when the main targets were the ones usually nearing
extinction in the first place. 113 This is even more surprising when one considers that it must surely
have dawned on him that his own collecting of rare and endangered birds would also have done
little to prevent their extinction, especially after discarding unsuitable victims when in search for
the perfect specimen due to his own shooting, irretrievability or predation.
His position on bird collecting is therefore based on the premise that he is serving science,
and anything to the contrary is damaging to the environment and reckless. He believed useful
birds should be “protected, except for scientific purposes”, 114 and disapproved of the increasing
number of tourists who every year ventured into the domain of the kiwi and kakapo, only to cause
these populations to rapidly decline “ohne dass damit der Wissenschaft gedient ist”. 115 Instead, he
argues, museums provide an environment of “instruction, free to public inspection”, in which
both local and foreign, rare and common specimens are on display without the need to “molest”
these birds. 116 And he warns that the time is near when “diese interessanten Thiere nur mehr in
den Museen zu finden sein werden und der schrille Pfiff des Kiwi, das Gekrächze der Kakapo und
der melancholische Ruf der Weka durch die nächtliche Stille der neuseeländischen Urwälder
nicht mehr ertönen wird”. 117 While today’s critics may point to his excessive shooting practices
and label him as one of the worst offenders, apart from a ‘quasi-official’ group of scenery
preservation societies and nature lovers, who, nevertheless, included prominent figures from
112
Ibid., 56f.; cf. Reischek, “Fauna Neuseelands”, 4-7.
113
“The impact of the collectors on bird populations was probably not great for most species; loss of habitat in the
progress of colonisation must have been a more significant factor than the loss of birds taken by collectors. However,
the collectors were not like other predators; they concentrated on the rare and unusual species – those with the
highest market value. Species nearing extinction were most valuable of all and hence the most rigorously hunted.
Where a species was known to survive only in a restricted area such as an island, the collector’s task became easier
and his destructive effect all the greater” (Ross Galbreath, “The 19 th -Century Bird Collectors”, in: A Flying Start,
128f.).
114
Reischek, “Habits of New Zealand Birds”, 101f.
115
Reischek, “Fauna Neuseelands”, 6.
116
Reischek, “Habits of New Zealand Birds”, 101.
117
Reischek, “Fauna Neuseelands”, 7.
248