Owl have to go check for you...

There's www.owlcatraz.co.nz/ in Shannon near Palmerston North.

I dont think you can hold them though.

I found this one a few years ago in Hagley Park Chch, it was a bit tired/hungry.  German / Little Owl - not a morepork.  What a beautiful wee creature it was, all fluff and it wouldn't take it's eyes off my eyes, it was quite calm and relaxed.  I dropped it off at a bird hospital.  For some reason, despite these not being native, you're not allowed to keep tham as pets.  I got the feeling that they'd make wonderful pets.

Probably Owlcatraz in Shannon as mentioned.  Of you could come over to my place any night this week and wring the neck of the Morepork that's been waking me up at 3am on the dot!

Thanks for the replies.

Sred: http://www.wingspan.co.nz/index.html

Possibly at wingspan in Rotorua

I went there within the last year and they did have a couple of owls but you couldn't hold them. During the talk they give you a chance to have a quick go at falconry though. The falcon perched on my head for a minute or so too :) Cool place

You could also contact a falconry club and ask them?

Can you fly to other parts of the country?

I've taken clients to Wingspan. If you do their 'back office' tour, which costs more (but the money helps keep them open) you will sometimes go in with their Morepork and I have images of the Morepork sat on client's wrists (wearing a falconry gauntlet, of course!). That is about as close to 'holding' one as you're going to get in a country where you cannot have them as pets (which is up there under "Odd NZ Rules" with it being illegal to sell trout!)

afe66: Not being able to sell trout makes perfect sense as you would create a legal method of selling poached fish, which woulddestroy the resource as people would gill net the spawning fish.

Fish in rivers worth much more to nz tourism than the option of another type of fish to eat.

As a country we aren't that "green", we just haven't had enough time to destroy out environment like overseas countries.

A.

Explain why it is not a problem in other countries then? What is unique about NZ that such criminal activity would be the automatic reaction?

Both the UK and the US have world-famous trout fishing and both allow the sale and farming of trout....

I can't find anything official from DOC to confirm that you're not allowed to keep a German / Little Owl as a pet, but I expect that the people who told me this (a bird rescue organisation) know the rules.

Looking for reasons why that may be the case here, I'm guessing that it's not to protect the Little Owl, but as there's evidence that as the range of the Little Owl and Morepork don't overlap, then deliberate breeding and probably accidental release of "pet" Little Owls could threaten Morepork populations.  That's a damned shame.

As for trout, there were proposals to allow commercial sale and farming, rejected for the reasons given above - that it would threaten recreational fishing through poaching, farming would threaten it by possibility of disease from fish-farming being transferred to wild trout populations.  Farmed trout (IMHO) isn't very nice to eat anyway - compared to farmed salmon - and probably wouldn't become a valuable industry.

http://www.pukaha.org.nz/what-youll-see/forest-birds

You'd have to check with Mt Bruce to see if they allow handling.

Fred99:

 

I can't find anything official from DOC to confirm that you're not allowed to keep a German / Little Owl as a pet, but I expect that the people who told me this (a bird rescue organisation) know the rules.

 

Looking for reasons why that may be the case here, I'm guessing that it's not to protect the Little Owl, but as there's evidence that as the range of the Little Owl and Morepork don't overlap, then deliberate breeding and probably accidental release of "pet" Little Owls could threaten Morepork populations.  That's a damned shame.

 

As for trout, there were proposals to allow commercial sale and farming, rejected for the reasons given above - that it would threaten recreational fishing through poaching, farming would threaten it by possibility of disease from fish-farming being transferred to wild trout populations.  Farmed trout (IMHO) isn't very nice to eat anyway - compared to farmed salmon - and probably wouldn't become a valuable industry.

 

We were told the same thing when we took the kids to Owlcatraz earlier in the year, as they have one German Owl that had been found and handed over to them. My recollection of what she said was this was due to DoC wanting to control their spread and numbers (I'm assuming for the reasons you give above).