Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/241

 NTIRELY distinct from the question referred to in the last chapter, the influence of game preservation on our fauna. is the vast and complicated problem of the preservation of a fauna and flora, for the two cannot be separated, in a civilised land, or in a new country that is undergoing the destructive process of fitting it for the habitation and exploitation of the colonist.

Economic questions loom large; there is little need to urge control of certain animals and plants. But the word "control" is misunderstood, and is usually construed as synonymous with destruction. Some particular creature or plant is harmful to some particular interest; "Sweep it away," is the cry, "Swot this fly," "Root out this weed." In our wholesale methods of removing an assumed foe we may also get rid of a valuable ally. The destruction of a food plant may mean the end of those creatures which feed upon it; the annihilation of one particular insect may destroy the plant that it fertilises.

Our fauna includes two main constituents—the native or ancient. and the colonist or alien; it is with the first that we are most concerned, those animals which inherited this land of our birth before we, mostly descended from alien invaders or colonists, decided that the land was ours, not theirs. It is a strange ethical question this of proprietorship, and man, thinking himself Lord of Creation, demands, like "Cunning old Fury," the right of life and death over all so-called lower animals.

"I'll try the whole cause. and condemn you to death," is the usual verdict.