KEY POINTS:
Two men have been jailed for six weeks after admitting charges of hunting, killing and possessing native wood pigeon (kukupa).
Michael Stanley Sampson, 36, and Murray William Ogle, 33, of Horeke in the Hokianga both pleaded guilty in the Kaikohe District Court after they were found with firearms by police and Department of Conservation rangers during a surveillance operation in the Omahuta Conservation Forest on May 24 last year.
They had two warm, dead kukupa with them.
In a DoC prosecution under the Wildlife Amendment Act, Crown Solicitor Mike Smith told the court the offence had not been motivated by any recognised cultural need, such as taking a bird to a dying kuia.
Although the Conservation Department offered a process for accessing kukupa feathers for cultural use, Sampson and Ogle had plucked the birds and discarded their feathers.
Mr Smith said a deterrent sentence was needed, especially for Sampson, who had been found guilty of the same offence in the same forest in 2000.
Defence lawyer Steve Nicholson said the defendants accepted what they had done was wrong but their offending did not warrant imprisonment.
Judge Keith De Ridder noted a 2003 affidavit from Dr Ray Pierce, an expert in the species, who said kukupa were at risk from hunting in Northland and he accepted this was still true in 2007.
The judge ruled out home detention as a sentencing option and jailed both men for six weeks.
