50,000 pukeko 'to be shot in duck season'

Pukeko are not generally eaten. Picture / Amos Chapple

Up to 50,000 pukeko will be killed during the three-month duck shooting season that begins tomorrow, an animal welfare organisation says.

Save Animals from Exploitation (Safe) said killing pukeko was senseless.

It urged the Department of Conservation to protect the birds under upcoming amendments to the Wildlife Act.

"The duck shooting season heralds the mass slaughter of ducks, geese and swan but few people realise duck shooters also set their sights on pukeko," Safe campaign director Hans Kriek said today.

"Not only do we deprive pukekos of their natural habitat through reclamation and drainage of wetlands, duck shooters add injury to insult by killing these magnificent birds solely for fun."

Unlike ducks and swans, pukeko were seldom eaten nor were they considered a significant pest species, Mr Kriek said.

He claimed duck shooters shot pukekos for fun and left their bodies to rot where they fell.

However, Fish and Game disputed the figures, saying only about 20,000 pukeko were killed.

Spokesman Rick Cullinane said that Safe's claim was way off mark and that about 20,000 pukekos were killed every duck hunting season.

Mr Cullinane said pukeko were native birds and they were listed in the Wildlife Act as gamebirds.

Fish and Game encouraged and promoted ethical hunting and did not support killing the birds for fun rather for food, he said.

- NZPA