Norwegian kereru shooters identified

Charges possible for hunters

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Wildlife enforcement officials have identified all the Norwegians suspected of having been involved in slaughtering protected native kereru in New Zealand.

"Our inquiries are well advanced," Department of Conservation (DOC) senior communications adviser Reuben Williams said today.

"We have the full names and return travel details of all five persons related to the video clips," he told NZPA.

DOC is pursuing the five through an international treaty, but has not said what action it might attempt to take against them.

The five, who are understood to all have lived or worked at some point in the Arctic Norwegian town of Tromso, posted a clip on YouTube last week of them shooting a wide range of New Zealand wildlife over five weeks during summer.

But after three days, their clip of a rifleman shooting at a kereru, the bird falling from a tree, and film of one of the tourists holding two dead, bloody birds had attracted over 400 scathing comments.

The kereru is an absolutely protected species under the Wildlife Act and Mr Williams said today the department was "outraged at the content of the video".

The maximum penalty for killing such protected wildlife is a $100,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

The video also showed the tourists shooting a paradise shelduck with a rifle. Paradise ducks can only legally be hunted with licence and a shotgun during the shooting season starting in May. Illegal hunting can bring a fine of up to $5000.

However, the Norwegian penal code is harsher. It provides for up to six years jail for people convicted of having wilfully or through gross negligence reduced a natural population of protected wildlife, in Norway or overseas.

DOC will be initially pursuing the Norwegians through an international treaty Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) to which both countries are signatories.

"We will be in contact with the Norwegian authorities," said Mr Williams.

"No formal decisions have been made at this time as to what form the impending legal action will take".

Hans Tore Hoviskeland, a senior public prosecutor at the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Okokrim) told the nation's biggest newspaper, Aftenposten, that if the men had shot protected animals in New Zealand, "it is very regrettable".

"The way I see it, they can also be prosecuted in criminal proceedings in Norway," he said. "We will do further research to see what has happened in the case".

But another prosecutor at Okokrim, Aud Slettemoen, said the agency had not yet received any request from the authorities in New Zealand, or any advice that the kereru were an endangered or protected species.

An angling website, Fluefiske.net, reported the group of fly fishermen visited both the North and South Islands and said one them told it: "I have been completely bitten by this country".

It did not name the man, who said he and four "crazy" friends spent five weeks hunting and fishing.

They were planning to return for another, longer trip.

"The goal is to create a motivational film about fly fishing in the South Island of New Zealand," the man said.

Another member of the group told the Dagbladet newspaper that the five arrived in New Zealand before Christmas, but claimed they had stayed within the law.

In New Zealand, the investigation has been managed by DOC's West Coast conservancy in conjunction with the department's national compliance team and the Auckland-based wildlife enforcement group, which includes Customs officials expert in the Cites rules.

- NZPA